The Great Band War
by Shadow Dragon
Summary: Ch 11! My rather pathetic end to it all! Who will win? We all know, but now it's really happening! Read it and flame, please!!
1. The Saga...er, starts off in a really, r...

A/N: The first in a great series about the Marching Knights and their antics. A character list will be included at the end. 

The Great Band War

By Shadow Dragon

The day was Monday, and that should have warned a few of them off.

For some strange reason, school had been canceled for an entire week. And for yet another strange reason, nobody in the band had been told, even though the band director did not show. So the entire band stood at the back door by the band room, waiting to be let inside. Laiva, who was always late, sprinted up to see an entire band and colorguard regiment wandering around, talking, chattering, and gossiping. Some people (the trumpets, mostly) clutched instrument cases as they talked. 

"What's going on?" Laiva asked her friend Gabi. Gabi only shrugged.

"Apparently, the school's deserted!" Alex, a really annoying trumpet player, called to the entire group. "We should go home!"

His best friend Travis stood up. "No!" he declared to the band. "We shall have a full game of manhunt. With all of us." His beady eyes swept over the crowd of confused band students, gleaming sadistically.

"Okay, let's go home," Sebras, another trumpet player, called. He picked up his brown trumpet case and started to tromp out to his '87 Jaguar. His twin brother Verran stood up to go as well, offering Autumn a ride. Travis's next words stopped them both in their tracks.

"What's the matter? Chickens?" Travis shouted after them.

"It's only a simple game of manhunt, after all," Alex added, always the "supportive-of-Travis" type. Gabi, who had dated him for two weeks before deciding he was a horrible stalker, glared royally at him, but he was too thick to notice.

"And hell is just a sauna," Laiva quoted to Gabi, who promptly stopped glaring and laughed.

"Is the mighty Sebras too chicken to play a widdle game of manhunt?" Travis's other best friend Mike mocked, flapping his arms in the manner of a chicken.

Sebras was not especially tall or strongly built, but Travis, being short and skinny, paled in stature next to him. So when Sebras strode up to him and stood right in front of him, staring down at him, the picture looked certainly amusing to those watching. Finally, Alex (who was bigger than Sebras, but not by much) jerked Travis back and assumed his position, making the contest seem much fairer.

"I'm not chicken," Sebras said in a voice like ice. "I'm tired, I've got a computer at home…"

"Sebras is scared of a little game!" Mike shouted gleefully, dancing around.

The band, who had been silently watching the exchange, gasped in unison. Perhaps this had something to do with the sign proclaiming "Gasp!" in Alex's hands.

"We'll play your game," Solan said, standing up and striding over to where the group was. "We'll play your game and then we'll go home. Winning team makes losing team stack chairs for a week."

"Those stakes are much too low," Mike snorted.

"A month, then," And Rand joined his two friends. He played trumpet, a chair ahead of Solan, and Travis's only competition.

"Boooorrring," Mike complained. "What are you, a bunch of wusses?" He danced around again, having thrown the "Gasp!" sign against the wall of the school building.

"Say, why don't we fight for . . .first chair?" Travis asked, beady eyes glittering again. From somewhere or other, he had pulled on a leather jacket and a pair of shades so that he looked like an extremely wimpy version of a kid trying to look like Arnold Schwartzenegger. Laiva, seeing this, snickered.

"First chair? Sounds fair," Rand agreed too quickly.

Alex caught this and said, "No, wait. That's not all. Travis is risking his position, his own neck. We need compensation." He rubbed his thumb across his middle finger and index finger in an obvious sign of "cold, hard cash."

The band was now watching this exchange with great intensity. Half of them liked Travis as the main section leader and didn't want him to get overthrown. The rest of the band disliked Travis with a passion and couldn't wait for the day he was usurped. Amethyst, a color guard member who played flute for the remainder of the year, had even made T-shirts that said, "Down with Travisism!"

Brorby, who naturally wanted Brorbism to rise in place of Travisism, had bought a gross of them.

"Time out," Solan called to Travis, Mike, and Alex. "Guys, what do we have? I'm completely broke—at least, I don't have enough to _buy_ the position off of him."

"Broke," Sebras agreed glumly. 

Rand's eyes fell on Sebras's trumpet case. "What about this? You've got the nicest trumpet in the band. Wouldn't Travis just love to get his greasy little paws on this?" He picked up the case, but Sebras snatched it away.

"He's not _touching _my baby, do you hear me?" Sebras hissed.

"Look, if he wins, you can just say that he stole your trumpet and get it back," Solan pointed out logically. "And if that doesn't work, you should just punch him in the face and steal it."

"Are you done yet? I want to play before first period, you know," Travis called in an authoritative tone. The three young men met glances, nodded slightly, and turned back. "Well, how much are you offering me?" He said 'me' like he was the King of the Band.

"Sebras's trumpet." Rand brought it out of the case and let the soft morning sunlight fall on the silver splendor of the Bach trumpet. "One dent, no scratches. Some fingerprints, but those can be polished, can't they?"

"What are the rules?" Travis asked, eyes greedily drinking in the sight of the magnificent trumpet.

"Play 'til you defeat the other team. No firearms, no smoking, you get the picture," Rand explained. "We keep the trumpet. You keep first chair. As soon as the end of the game as commenced, the prizes will be delegated to the worthy winner. The trumpet will be kept in Band Locker Number 99 and a written statement signed by yourself, Alex, Sebras, and myself, witnessed by Solan and Mike. First, however, we must select teams. We'll be "

"By string or just let them cipher over to the captain they like better?" Travis asked.

"Let them choose sides," Solan told him. "It'll be amusing."

Perhaps he was expecting, like both Rand and Sebras, that most of the band would come over to their side. However, the band evened itself out between two teams, standing behind either of the two groups of trumpets. Laiva whipped out a clipboard and wrote down the names of her team and their instruments. She was pleased to note that they had plenty of seniors and juniors—a strong team that would outwit Travis's team.

"Okay, the teams are selected," Mike announced with obvious ado. "We'll be Team…Puce and you all can be Team Green." He meant 'puce' to be a joke to his own team, but Team Green found it funnier.

Meg, one of the drum majors on Team Green, let the two teams indoors using a skeleton key. "I didn't steal it," she told Laiva indignantly. "I'm just borrowing it indefinitely."

Everybody that could squeeze into the band locker room watched as Travis, Alex, Mike, Sebras, Solan, and Rand signed the contract and placed it in locker 99. Sebras's trumpet joined it and the lock was placed upon the locker (the lock belonged to the head drum major, who decided not to participate in this petty game and went into the band director's office to sleep).

"Since you made the rules, we'll make up this one," Travis said with a solemn expression. "At nine o'clock, the game will begin. Any hostages taken previously to nine o'clock will be considered moot hostages and returned to Knight's Square. If you take a hostage, they are not to be harmed."

"We'll even feed ours," Sebras said with a grin. Team Puce's freshmen looked slightly relieved at this statement.

"Good luck, then. May the best team win," Rand snapped. Sebras and Travis shook hands, Rand and Alex shook hands, and Mike and Solan shook hands. The rest of the team members glanced disdainfully at one another. Team Green marched out of the band room, completely on-step.

Laiva grabbed the shoulder of a sophomore named Brorby. "Brorby, you've got to help out. Get on O'Malley's computer. Wait for the signal, okay?" she whispered to him. "Hide in with Team Puce—they didn't write down their team members."

Brorby nodded and set off to his task.

"Where are we headed?" Sebras asked Rand as the team left the band hallway.

"Somewhere with a computer. A teacher's lounge, perhaps?" Solan suggested, looking left and right. "The office is too dangerous—especially the glass walls. Downstairs blue and green hallways aren't very good either. How about the upstairs red hallway?"

"Why the science hallway?" Gabi asked.

Verran and Autumn stood nearby, listening to the conversations. Amethyst was talking to Eve, a bassoon player, about strategies the two could invoke. Several of the other band students, the ones who didn't care about being cool, stood around, chattering aimlessly.

"Because all the rooms have doors that go between them," Solan pointed out. "We don't even have to use the hallway. Except to go from a couple of the classrooms, but that won't matter too much. We'll be careful."

"Good idea. Loads of computers, hydrochloric acid, and Ms. Adobe's Jolly Green Giant figurine that's taller than Michael Jordan," Rand remarked. He waved to his troops and they struck out to set up a base in the science wing.

Last notes: Stick around for chapter two in this crazy fic! The quote is from "Ten Things I Hate About You" and kudos to you if you recognized it.


	2. Of Giants, Cardboard, and Chocolate Oran...

****

8:02 a. m., Monday

Adobe's Classroom

Team Green 

Team Green had pooled their resources and had discovered at least one member of every section in the band (including the only member of the bassoon section), fifteen different cars, a Jolly Green Giant statue, a mass of different chemicals, eight computers, fifty three dollars and thirty two cents, and a kayak. Several of the flute and clarinet players had their instruments with them, but they refused to use them for battle, so the instruments were all stored away in a locked cabinet (once again utilizing Meg's skeleton key).

Rand strutted about, examining the computers with Solan's help and leaving Sebras and the rest to organize the "army," as he called it. The saxophones, of which there were a great many, decided that Team Green should use guerilla tactics and spread out. Agreeing, Sebras appointed Ashley (not me, another Ashley) to sort out the saxophone troops as she was the Section Leader. The French Horns, of which there were two, Laiva (_that's_ me) and Gabi, were both given command positions as Generals. The rest of the trumpet players that hated Travis's reign over the trumpet section, joined in with the woodwinds to form a very chaotic section. Finally, one of the seniors, Kelly, shouted at them to shut up and they subsided meekly.

Triphos and Meg, the two drum majors, were willing to lead the percussionists. "I'm glad to see that we got the nicer of the lot," Laiva remarked to Gabi. Decked in red berets and leather jackets, the percussionists consisted of two seniors, two juniors, a sophomore, and a freshman. Enough for a small hit team, apparently. One of the percussionists was also colorguard captain, which gave them quite a head start against Team Puce.

"We've got two drum majors and a colorguard captain, how can we _not_ win?" Laiva told Sebras when he consulted the clipboard worriedly. "Plus, we've got the Jolly Green Giant." And she pointed to where the green styrofoam figure towered in the corner. "Oh, yes, and life-size cardboard cutouts of Queen Amidala and Mace Windu."

"But they're cardboard."

"We've also got Sprout. We're lucky Adobe likes strange things," Laiva countered, nodding at the styrofoam figurine of a smaller Jolly Green Giant. "Hey, look, the little mermaid." She picked up a small plastic figurine of the redheaded Ariel and chucked it hard against the dry-erase board. "Solid. We could knock somebody out with this."

"Or you could sing her song. It would have the same effect—pain."

"Wow, this place is creepy," Autumn, who did not have Adobe for a teacher, remarked. The freshmen and sophomores, who were still in Biology and Chemistry I all nodded and shied away from the walls. The Jolly Green Giant just grinned at them, looking completely smug and cocky. Laiva wanted to kick it.

The saxophones crouched over one of the lab tables, detailing their plans and passing out walkie-talkies that they had found in Adobe's cabinet. The woodwinds split up into regiments, selecting leaders between them. The French Horns scrambled about, organizing the groups and getting in touch with each of the leaders. The percussionists and trumpets all gathered around another lab table to conspire.

"Ten minutes until nine o'clock," Solan announced to the group after they had set up the army completely. "We should probably start getting set—"

He was cut off by the sound of a door slamming open and the vision of Travis in a leather jacket. Team Green stood stock-still and only watched as Team Puce exploded into the classroom all around them, looking incredibly fierce. From somewhere, they had donned black leather jackets and puce-colored bandannas twisted about their skulls. Black lines were drawn under their eyes, giving a strange resemblance to the football team. Travis swaggered up to Rand, Solan, and Sebras, all gathered around the computer.

"The game hasn't started yet," Rand remarked, not glancing up from the monitor. "And the football game isn't until next Friday."

"We know." Travis pulled out a pair of sunglasses and snapped them on his face.

"So you're just coming to wish us luck? That's sweet—now get out."

"Not quite. I've come to collect some of my loyal followers." Travis snapped his fingers and half of Team Green tensed. Sebras's eyes grew wide as they grew leather jackets and puce bandannas and joined the other team. Team Puce suddenly grew to be twice the size of Team Green. In the garish light, they looked menacing and controlled as opposed to the artistically scattered Team Green. Travis surveyed his team with a proud gleam in his eye before turning back to Team Green. "You lot are so gullible."

Laughing, he and his (much) larger team left.

****

8:59 a. m., Monday

Adobe's Classroom

Team Green 

"We've lost fifty percent of our troops," Solan reported with a grave look tossed about the room. "And the game starts in one minute."

"We need to relocate," Rand snapped. "Now! Travis's team knows where our base is—this isn't safe. We're _not _giving that trumpet up."

"I'll say we aren't," Gabi snorted. She leaned against the wall by the Green Giant, letting a flurry of emotion take the interstate across her face. "We should stay here, though. We'll have somebody guard the base, but we'll make it look like we've moved."

"Is that wise, however? The game starts in a minute—" Eve began.

"Forty-five seconds," Solan corrected.

"The game starts _soon_, very soon." Eve rolled her eyes and continued, "We don't exactly have time to set up another base and make it look occupied."

"Just give me a few minutes on the computer. Trust me, I can access everything in this school." A few of the computer geeks in the band crowded around the computer where Rand still sat, working feverishly to break into the school's main computer.

"Meanwhile, we need to set up hit teams. Percussion, are you able to fend for yourselves?" Sebras said, clapping his hands for attention. They'd turned out the lights, but Miss Adobe's overhead projector had come into much use. If they ignored the notes on hydrocarbons and equilibrium, the battle plans looked almost genuine.

Meg, poised over the chessboard they had lugged out of Miss Adobe's desk, looked up. The chessboard was a gaudy affair, decked in shades of pink and gray, and the chess pieces seemed to be Disney characters. Gabi had snickered when she had noticed that the Beast was the king and Belle was the queen. "Of course. We're an army in ourselves."

"Good. I want the lot of you to scout out the school. Report back to the base by 9:30, at least. Be careful not to be seen," Sebras ordered. "Laiva, how many people do we have?"

"A lot less than what we used to. A lot of our freshmen and younger woodwind players switched over to Travis's team. Most of the juniors and seniors and a lot of the sophomores were smart enough to see through his big head," Laiva reported.

"We need regiments. Nobody is to be alone and nobody, absolutely nobody, is to know every plan. If we have a spy from Team Puce, they will not be able to second-guess our every move." Now Solan stood up and began pacing.

Sebras continued, "Our 'supposed' base will change periodically throughout the day. Younger officers are to report in with the generals who will be patrolling in hopes to capture any random members of Team Puce. We will divide into segments, regiments. A junior or a senior will lead each regiment. I know, I know, you underclassmen can stop grumbling. You'll get your turn when we play Capture-the-Flag." He grinned sadistically. "Always remember what's on the line in this game."

"The chance to finally down Travisism?" Amethyst asked innocently, showing off her T-shirt.

"Manhunt's a tough sport," Laiva cautioned after she was done laughing at Amethyst. "It's hide-and-go-seek, pumped up. We'll need to capture the whole of Team Puce, or at least enough so that they'll forfeit. It won't be easy—they're twice the size of us."

"Where are we going to keep the prisoners?" a freshman asked.

"In several different places." Gabi smiled, a feral gleam in her eyes. Although her demeanor was sweet and innocent, she lived for the stuff of war. "We'll blindfold them, too, and move them constantly, so they can't hope to know where they are."

"We're downright cruel, we are," a sophomore sniggered from the back.

They then worked in a lightning-fast manner to separate Team Green into regiments, an upperclassman standing proudly in front of each. "If you see somebody get captured or even hear a rumor, report to Laiva immediately," Amethyst instructed from her own regiment with the colorguard.

Laiva absently waved the clipboard at them.

"Hey, are there any lights?" Rand asked from where he was sorting through the wiring in the computer. Seeing some atop the bulbous head of Sprout, Eve tossed them to him. "Oh! They're shaped like the Pillsbury Doughboy!"

"Told you Ms. Adobe likes weird things," Laiva hissed to Sebras, who only shrugged and looked hard at the Jolly Green Giant, still reigning smug over them.

****

9:17 a. m., Monday

Downstairs Blue Corridor

Team Green

"Meg! Come here!" Krista, the freshman drummer, hissed to the drum major, an experienced sophomore drummer. Meg complied immediately, slipping from the shadows she had used to guard herself and joining the freshman at the door to O'Malley's (the director) office. The office had two entrances—one from the band room and the other from the downstairs blue hallway. As one whole wall of O'Malley's office was of pure Plexiglas, the two could see right through to the band room through a little window in the door to the blue hallway.

"Just as we thought," Meg said after a long glimpse. "Exactly as we thought."

"What?" Krista asked as the two slipped away from the window and hurried towards the main staircase at the joint of all three hallways. They passed the elevator door, which hummed quietly.

"Team Puce has used the band room as their base. How unimaginative. They'd better not steal Gabi's secret supply of chocolate oranges or heads WILL roll." Meg started to climb the staircase when the two heard laughter behind them. "Quick, hide!"

But they were in the most open part of the school. Both scrambled for the shadows of the nearest wall, but neither made it as two members from Team Puce arrived. One shouted upon seeing the percussionist and the drum major. "Get them! Halt, you evildoers!" 

Neither Meg nor Krista intended to do this. Both were pelting down the blue hallway, headed for the Art Wing. Unfortunately, the Team Puce members, both of whom were juniors, had the advantage of speed on either Meg or Krista. "Quick! Get back to the Band Room and report!" Meg gasped to Krista as they reached the stairs at the opposite end of the blue hallway. Krista caught the skeleton key Meg threw at her, nodded, and raced up the steps, panting heavily. Meg whipped around and ran straight at the juniors, hoping to confuse them. They leaped out of the way, thinking Meg was rabid. After a second of confused staggering, they turned as well and gave chase.

_Blast it all_, Meg swore to herself. _I could be sitting in Keyboarding I right now, but nooo, I'm being chased down a hallway by manic juniors._ _And the other school drum majors complain that they get no respect. _

She cut a sharp right and plunged into the conveniently open elevator doors. The elevator doors slammed in the faces of the Team Puce members. Meg did not press the floor two button; instead, she held the door closed button and pressed her ear against the door. As soon as she heard the thumping feet of Team Puce climbing the stair (very few of Team Puce actually knew how to march), she pressed the Door Open button and disappeared quietly down the Downstairs Red Corridor, sneaking up the back stairs and into Adobe's room.

****

10:04 a.m., Monday

Adobe's Classroom

Team Green

"We have contact!" Rand hissed to the room in general, leaping onto his chair in excitement. As Rand had not been known to leap onto chairs, he received quite a few odd looks from the team about to be dispatched to set up the 'supposed' base.

Gabi, in charge of the team, glanced over at him. "Contact with who?"

"Whom," Laiva corrected absently from her perch over the chessboard.

"Ten o'clock and five minutes! Team 2, go!" The team left without hearing an explanation to Rand's announcement, carrying a considerable amount of magnesium wire. The magnesium wire had been Solan's idea. 

"Look," Solan had told the group on discovery of the wire, "it's not very strong, I know, but we can convince hostages that it is. All we have to do is beat them with these stale ginger-moles left over from Mole Day when they start to struggle against the wire."

"Yes, let's beat them over the head with cookies. That sounds _real_ fierce," Amethyst remarked sarcastically. Solan threw one of the offending cookies at her and she yelped. A bright red spot marked the place on her arm where the cookie had hit her. "Okay, so maybe it's more fierce than I thought."

"Anyway," Rand broke in now over the noise of the team being dispatched, "we've made contact with somebody very important."

"The pizza delivery guy?" one of the freshman guys asked from the back of room.

"No—our spy! We've got him on DirectLink," Rand explained, looking frustrated now. "He's well secured in Team Puce's base, and working feverishly on 'The Plan.'" Behind him, Laiva could see a DirectLink chatroom open via the computer's internet capabilities. The spy, "TubaGuy," had a blinking message beside his name.

"'The plan?'" 

"Yes, a plan allowing us, Team Green, to take over not only Team Puce, but the world! With a crushing fist, we'll control this planet," Rand said, rubbing his hands together as a maniacal gleam came into his eyes.

"Whoa, cut down on the caffeine, dude," a freshman extra in a red shirt said, alarmed. Everybody stared at his red shirt. "I'm going to die before this is over, aren't I?"

"You _are_ wearing a red shirt."

"Crud."

During this brief debate, Solan had taken the helm at the computer and typed a message to the mysterious spy. A moment's pause came before he said, "The spy insists that when we win this game, his throne will be made out of platinum. Pure platinum." He paused. "Oh, wait, there's more. Apparently, thrones made from gold are for leaders who only rule countries. Our ambitious little spy thinks he's going to rule the world. Oh, yes, and he also mentioned that our freshman drummer was apprehended earlier. With our skeleton key. We'll have to run a reconnaissance mission and retrieve her."

"Is this the part where we all stare at the sky and wonder how this game got to be so large?" Laiva asked into the surprised silence that followed.

"I dunno. I just dunno."


	3. You are Here and The Pink Barbie Car

Disclaimer: Everything taken from _Mission Impossible _belongs to whoever the _Mission Impossible _people are and I am making no money off of this. Trust me, if I were making money, I wouldn't be posting here….

A/N: This chapter isn't as funny as chapter two, but it's essential to the plot line, so I couldn't leave it out. Will Meg and Autumn successfully retrieve the stolen skeleton key? Will Team Green seniors make their way through the fabled crypt beneath the school? Will our lovable characters survive my role-playing game? Read on and find out in…

****

You are Here and the Pink Barbie Car

12:02 p. m., Monday

Downstairs Blue Corridor (outside Band Office)

Team Green

Several seniors from Team Green crept off of the silent elevator, swapping nervous looks to the tune of the James Bond theme song. Moving as one, they slunk down the blue hallway, stopping in front of the assigned set of lockers and looking around—

"Can we at least get the _Mission Impossible _theme song?" Kelly, one of the seniors, demanded exasperatedly. None of the freshman dared cross her—Kelly was very reputed for her sarcasm and despite the fact that the head basketball coach had killed her dreams, very athletic. 

"James Bond is so chauvinistic and besides, we played it for pep band sophomore year," her friend Elyse complained. Elyse was also the captain of the colorguard and thus another figure not to be crossed. Together, she and Kelly made a formidable team.

"And we didn't play _Mission Impossible_?" a junior from the saxophone regiment had the gall to ask. The entire saxophone regiment was following the group of seniors, making sure they made it to the destination on time. Kelly pinned the culprit of this remark with a glare and she subsided.

"We like it better, anyway," Elyse said logically.

Jenn, who was busily providing the theme songs for them to work to, quickly changed to an equally off-tone version of the theme song from _Mission Impossible_. She, like most of the rest of the band, could not sing. They were, after all, mostly only band students and thus born with the inability to sing.

That done, the seniors pushed a freshman forth from their number and pointed at the lockers in front of her. With a sigh, she reached out and touched the set of lockers, watching in boredom. This was a common thing known to the Marching Eagles and the school they attended. Freshmen had hideaways through the lockers that they used frequently to escape the Evil Seniors. After freshman year, not one student entered these secret hideaways. What the group of seniors planned to do would go down in history.

Hesitantly, Elyse stepped forward and peered inside the hideaway. "Hey!" she cried in dismay. "We never got television sets when _we_ were freshmen!"

"Or DVD players," Jenn said, pausing the song to comment.

"Come on, we're on a mission," Kelly said, jostling the freshman in annoyance because the newest freshmen were luckier than their class had been. The poor freshman sighed as though she bore the weight of the world upon her shoulders.

****

12:04 p. m., Monday

Ventilation Ducts (Band Room)

Team Green Reconnaissance Mission

"Ow, Autumn!" Meg whined as she ran square into Autumn—again—in the ventilation shafts leading into the Band Room. "Do you have to stop so suddenly?"

The younger girl did not apologize; she merely shot Meg a quelling look that made Meg shut up quite abruptly. The two were standing in the shafts underneath the ground. Luckily, they were of moderately average height as humans go and did not have any problem ducking underneath the obstacles. 'What's going on?' Meg mouthed to Autumn, looking above them and flinching. Somewhere up there, Travis reined with a spiked-leather hand.

'They might hear us in the shaft,' Autumn replied.

Meg, apparently not able to read lips, gawked. 'You and Verran did _what_ the week before last?'

'Shut up!'

'I'm not making any noise.'

"Grr." This had been uttered aloud, much to Meg's sadistic pleasure. Autumn looked quite fierce in the darkness with dirt from the vent ducts smudged across her porcelain features. Even in the blackness of the vent ducts, Meg could see her green-blue eyes standing out. 'Come on. We still have to make the trip _up_ to the ceiling of O'Malley's office.'

'Yeah, and let's hope that our surprise technique wasn't spoiled by your 'grr,' eh?' Meg asked, even though Autumn's back was turned. She obediently followed Autumn up the slope. At one point, she suspected that they passed right next to the claustrophobia-inducing practice rooms—there were noises that sounded quite like snogging emanating from her left. Grinning broadly, Meg pushed on, slowly lowering into a crawl as the tunnel narrowed. She and Autumn eventually wound up slithering on their bellies in a military fashion.

'We're here,' Autumn hissed suddenly, stopping abruptly. Meg bounced into her and fell back with a sickeningly loud thud. 'Great. That's the last time I let _you_ follow. You're clumsy.'

'I'm a percussionist,' Meg reprimanded, as though there was a difference. Autumn only rolled her eyes and gestured that Meg should help her haul a huge iron gate out of the way so that they could slip unnoticed into O'Malley's office. Surprisingly, the spy was not there—Travis had called an all-team meeting. 'Guess nobody heard.'

There was a moment's pause as they listened for thudding feet. "You wearing your harness?" Meg asked, shuffling her hands nervously over the thick hunk of rope she had brought with her. Autumn nodded and looped the rope through the carribeaner they had stolen from a classmate who was not in band. She and Meg wore similar devices over their jeans—devices that would allow Autumn to drop into O'Malley's office from the ceiling in a much _Mission Impossible_-esque style. Meg would be her support and possibly the only one who could jerk her out of view in time.

"Do you see the key?" Autumn asked, peering around the office before she prepared to jump.

"They'll have it stored in the desk drawer—TubaGuy said so. The chocolate oranges are in the third drawer from the top on the left. If nothing else, get those," Meg told her in an urgent voice. "TubaGuy did as much as he could to get the area cleared for us. The seniors should have given him the signal by now. Still, we only have five minutes, give or take a few."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Autumn asked with adventurous glint in her green-blue eyes. With no further ado, she jumped, trusting the rope in Meg's hands to support her. Meg jerked only once and let Autumn down slowly, leaving her to drift there, belly down.

"Tom Cruise had better be running with his money," Autumn said as she stared out of the Plexiglas window to where Team Puce was gathered. Travis was explaining something or other, gesticulating wildly with both hands. Autumn smiled and began rummaging through O'Malley's desk. She found several band director-y things like screwdrivers and knick-knacks from different instruments. One drawer was chock-full of mouthpieces. The drawer below that held the fabled supply of Chocolate Oranges. Beaming broadly, Autumn passed these up to Meg before searching for the key.

The key was not hard to find, but it was hard to reach. Verran and Sebras had constructed the harnesses from bits found in the science offices to be the most aerodynamic possible. This meant that Autumn had to lie flat on her belly in mid-air to get the most strength and support from Meg. She had slid down the rope in a vertical position and now she was stretched out over the band director's desk. Her arms were just not long enough to reach the key, she discovered quickly. Finally, she decided to swing and randomly snatch at the great silver object.

With one leg, she kicked off from the desk and winced as that only managed to swing her a little bit and create a very loud noise. This noise only succeeded in startling Meg to drop a piece of chocolate orange on the floor. Autumn snatched the key just as she saw Team Puce members through the Plexiglas and jerked three times on her cord. Immediately, a very startled Meg whipped her up.

"Run!" Autumn hissed, holding the key up. "Head for the gyms!" Meg slapped the iron gate back over the ventilation shaft entrance and the two started to slither away.

She heard a loud bang as the band office door swung open and knocked solidly against the metal desk. Thankful that they had left nothing as incriminating evidence, Autumn started to slither faster.

"Team Green was here!" Travis's voice snapped, distant and tinny because of the effect of the duct about Autumn.

How had they known? She had shut all of the desk drawers—she was sure of it. There was no other evidence, naught a thing out of place…

Oh, no.

The chocolate orange slice that Meg had dropped!

"Hurry!" Autumn hissed to Meg. They were now far enough away from the band office to be out of sight in case somebody did think of the ventilation shafts, but Autumn felt no need to have a pursuer. She could hear the thumping of somebody yanking out the gate and somebody's echoing voice shouting hello…

This only propelled her faster.

That was followed by the telltale thumps that could only be somebody climbing into the vent ducts. Not one person, Autumn couldn't help but notice, but three. They had three pursuers now and who knew how many people waiting on the other end of the duct. Meg, who was leading this time, cut a sharp right into a duct that sloped downwards. Autumn, not thinking, followed and found herself screaming as she plummeted. Meg tried to grab her jacket to prevent her from falling, but Autumn slipped right out of the article of clothing and fell, screaming louder now.

If Team Puce hadn't heard them yet, they surely had now.

Autumn shot down further, screaming for dear life among all else.

****

12:08 p. m., Monday

Crypt Beneath the School

Team Green Seniors

"Ugh, it's dark down here," Ashley complained to nobody in particular as they all clambered down the ladder to the crypt beneath the school. "And it's _cold_."

"That's why we brought extra sweaters," Jenn pointed out, stopping her song for a short time to comment. Elyse took the honor of shoving a dark green one to Ashley before passing their resident freshman a navy blue sweater. 

"Now it's warmer," Kelly said, feeling like pointing out the obvious.

"Hey," Elyse said suddenly as she stepped off of the last creaking stair and looked about her into the giant, cobwebby room. Her feet kicked up years of dust as she bent at the nearest wall and examined strange drawings sketched into it. Years before, somebody had spray-painted hieroglyphics in garish blue paint that had darkened from years of being in pitch-blackness. "Jenn, pass me the lighter."

"And Elyse, our historic preservationist, has returned," somebody muttered behind her (Elyse would later suspect Lisa, one of the two "scary seniors"). Jenn paused her song yet again to toss Elyse the lighter. The tallish girl flicked it open and pressed the button, holding the device close to the wall. "Ah. Aha."

"And the secrets of our school are revealed…" Jenn whispered to Ashley. Ashley, holding tightly to a walkie-talkie and listening carefully, hissed at her to be quiet for a moment. She was in charge of the saxophone regiment, and had set them up to guard the entranceway in case any Team Puce members were curious or stupid enough to wander into the fabled freshmen hideaways. Andrea, the sophomore she had left in charge (who happened to own a leopard-printed saxophone), kept calling up with messages for her.

"We were nearly spotted, but the Pucer – " Andrea's nickname for Team Puce's members "—decided to start singing just as he passed. We caught him and took him to Gabi and Team Two with the prisoners."

"Two more prisoners in our clutches."

As Elyse studied the symbols for a long moment, the rest of the seniors listened for Andrea's messages, occasionally making comments ("Ooh! She sounds mad—must be an ex-boyfriend." "Hey, look, this little button makes the walkie-talkie light up!").

"I've got it!" Elyse told the freshman, who was the only one not clustered around the walkie-talkie. "It's a _map_!"

"I could have told you that," the freshman told her, rolling her eyes. "The big red dot means 'You are Here.'"

"Which one are you, anyway?" Elyse asked, peering hard at the freshman. She was one of the guard freshmen, one of a set of identical twins to be precise. Try as she might, Elyse still had difficulties in immediately telling the two apart; certainly, the darkness didn't help much. She couldn't even read the name on the colorguard jacket.

"Amethyst's got her freshman with her right now," the freshman only said. _Honestly, that doesn't help much, _an exasperated voice in Elyse's head told her.

_You know, hearing voices doesn't help your state of sanity much_, another voice told her. _It's generally a bad thing._

Is not!

Is too!

Is not!

SHUT UP!

Elyse blinked. She had just told herself to shut up. Elyse didn't do things like that—that was more Laiva's playing field. "I think I need to cut back on the caffeine now," she muttered to nobody in particular.

"What was that, cap'n?" the freshman, as Elyse had begun calling her, asked in an insolently cheerful tone. 

"Nothing," Elyse replied hastily. "Hey group! We need to get headed off! Come on, the map says the entrance we need to take isn't that far from here." Using her free hand (the other still had a lighter in it), Elyse wrapped her guard jacket closely about her form and started plodding the path she was quite sure no student had touched since the Beatles were still in England.

She wholeheartedly agreed with whoever it was that next whispered, "Boy, this place is creepy!"

****

12:18 p. m., Monday

Adobe's Classroom

Team Green

"Why haven't we gotten _any_ news yet?" Verran asked anxiously, wringing his hands. He was clearly awaiting news from Autumn, his girlfriend, who had not even sent word via the walkie-talkie that she and Meg had taken with them on their 'secret mission.'

"Maybe they're stuck in the vent shafts somewhere," Laiva commented with pointed maliciousness. She was to lead Team Five, who had not been dispatched yet, so she had taken the time to do some exploring. Her explorations had led her to find several stuff mole-type creatures (used for Mole day; they were clearly mocking the elements) atop the cabinets. Of course, there was paperwork, but as Laiva was in Adobe's class, she didn't feel necessary to screw up the grades of her classmates. Besides, she had found something much more amusing.

A pink plastic Barbie car—the first one able to support her in ages.

So she zoomed around Room 250 on her skateboard-car as everybody else planned strategies and ways to take the Pucer's base by force. Somebody had found a stash of JellyBeans and was using them to demonstrate different tactics. Team Green was quite lucky to have achieved one of the smartest sophomores in band, an almost-chess master.

"They could still reach us on the walkie-talkies," Verran argued.

Eve reached over and picked up the walkie-talkie. Pressing the 'Talk' button, she said loudly, "Hello? Anybody? Meg? Autumn?"

They waited impatiently, Laiva skating circles about their group, as no answer came.

"Do you reckon they might be in trouble?" Laiva drawled, swerving to a halt. "Or do you reckon they just forgot how the walkie-talkie works?"

Verran shot her a disgusted look and shouldered his backpack, now filled with several lengths of cord, magnesium wire, a flashlight, and food. "I'm going after them. Team Five, you will be dispatched to come after me if I don't return."

"Sure, sure, boss," Amethyst snapped, rolling her eyes. "We're giving the people down in the crypt twenty minutes before we go down after them, right, Gina?" 'Her' freshman, the twin to the unnamed freshman following Elyse, looked up from her card game with another blonde freshman and nodded.

Somebody rapped hard on the door five times in the pattern that was Team Green's. Solan, nearest the door, peeked out and nodded his clearance before letting the visitor in.

Meg stood there, eyes wide and suspiciously bright with…

"Autumn," she croaked worriedly, and staggered to the nearest desk. If Solan had not caught her arm with a steadying hand, she would have crashed to the floor. "Autumn…"

"What about Autumn?" Verran asked worriedly, standing up quite suddenly.

Meg stared at him for a long moment and swung her gaze about the room. "She," she struggled to get out. "She fell."

"Fell?" Sebras, the only one able to speak, asked. Laiva chanced a glance at Verran's face—he was whiter than snow on her grandfather's white Miata.

"We were running from Team Puce—in the ducts, see—and I turned right, there was a drop off and—and…" Meg paused and gulped.

"And?" Amethyst prompted, moving to comfort her friend.

"She fell. Just like that. She didn't even answer. I don't know if she's alive," Meg choked.

Laiva and Sebras exchanged the slightest of glances. "Verran, Laiva, Eve, Solan, I want all of you to go after her," Sebras instructed, his voice tight. "Amethyst, Gina, Rachel (the blonde freshman), you three go after the seniors in the crypt. We can't give up hope.

"Whatever we do, we can't give up hope."


	4. Into the Crypt

A/N: Hey, everybody. No references in here today. Well, there is one to the percussion mascot, but he should appear in the next chapter anyway. Enjoy!

****

Into the Crypt

12:23 p. m., Monday

Crypt

Team Green Seniors

The seniors (and freshman) had been following Elyse's excited directions for about ten minutes when the ominous sound of something rolling met up with them and they turned to see Trisha, a fellow senior. She looked harried and tired, but proudly showed off her object.

"Where did you get _that?_" Lisa demanded.

"Adobe's room. They only said get something that could contain Travis. This should do quite nicely," Trisha explained, patting the object like one pats a favorite pet. "The only trouble will be getting him to shut up."

Kelly held up a roll of duct tape.

"And once again, I am proven wrong," Trisha remarked to nobody. She switched tactics. "By the way, I want all of you to know that I had to _carry_ this thing down the stairs. By myself."

"Why?" Jenn asked. "You could have made the freshman do it." All of the seniors (minus Elyse) all turned and stared formidably at the freshman, who only rolled her eyes at them and jacked her discman up to the loudest volume.

A few minutes later, when she realized that they were still giving her piercing stares, she pulled off the headphones and sighed. "This is because I'm refusing to tell you my name, isn't it?" she asked nobody in particular, even though ten eyes were giving her their full attention.

"Yep."

"We should have _at least_ brought Little Lisa," Lisa said regretfully. "We know _her_ real name—Rachel." Rachel, a freshman, had gained this nickname after a particularly sticky incident at a colorguard practice. After Elyse had chased Rachel around the gym (armed with a flagpole) for five minutes, Lisa had decided that Rachel deserved some sort of honor and had dubbed her Little Lisa after everybody's favorite "scary senior." 

Elyse, who had been chattering busily to herself for ten minutes straight (Ashley was starting to think she had diarrhea of the mouth), suddenly halted dead in her tracks and whispered something.

"I'm sorry, didn't quite catch that," the freshman remarked cheekily. "What was that you said? You wanted to—"

Elyse slapped a hand over the freshman's mouth before she could continue on that thread and said, "I think I found it."

This was met by excited cheers until Ashley asked, "Found what?"

That apparently set Elyse off or something along those lines. She shrieked excitedly. "I've found something BIG! I've found something BIG! I'm going to be the most famous Historic Preservationist ev—" The freshman, already fed up with this, twisted out of her grasp and slapped both hands over the excited colorguard captain's mouth. The next few minutes were spent trying to interpret the garble coming from beyond the freshman's hands.

Finally, Kelly frog-pinned Elyse up against the wall, making her slow down. "Okay, what did you find?" she asked in a voice clearly meant for dealing with eager little children.

"I've found the entrance I've been looking for since I was a sophomore!" Elyse nearly shouted, deciding to ignore Kelly's tone. "It's right over there, see? These hieroglyphics right here are clearly indicating that Saturn is in the fifth square, but the Benzene shape—"

"Just show us," Trisha said in an exasperated voice.

Obediently, Elyse led them to the far wall, where they could see a great expanse of dusty stone. Unlike the wall opposite, though, this wall was completely devoid of all graffiti or hieroglyphics. Elyse seemed to ignore this and was peering it up and down, searching for something. "Aha!" she cried. "Look, see, there's a handprint right here. That's the doorknob. Somebody powerful has to open it…I need somebody powerful…who's powerful?"

"*Captain Insano the percussion mascot?" Kelly demanded sarcastically. "That blue rat isn't powerful, whatever they think—"

"You know," Jenn broke in, "Elyse, you're pretty powerful. You're a colorguard captain and you have a big stick—"

"_Flagpole_," the freshman, Lisa, Trisha, and Elyse corrected absently.

"Flagpole, whatever it is, you have it. Plus, you're the section leader for the bells," Jenn finished.

"And you're a senior," the freshman added, for once deciding to help out. She quickly vowed to make life difficult for these seniors for dragging her down into this crypt. Although this place had possibilities…

"I'd say that's pretty powerful," Ashley finished it up.

In the darkness, one could imagine Elyse turning bright pink. Of course, one could also imagine her glaring furiously. As four years of being in colorguard had probably hardened her considerably against the cursed syndrome known simply as "The Blush," one would more likely imagine her glaring.

Or one could imagine her being too excited about her discovery to care.

As she was.

So she gibbered excitedly for one short instant before she pressed her hand firmly against the supposed hand print in the wall at just about head height. For a long moment, nothing changed except the slowly increasing disappointment on Elyse's face. "This is no use," she began to say, but stopped.

Her hand was glowing.

It was not the strange red glow that light through a hand makes. No, this glow was bright green and emanated from what could only be her hand. Elyse watched in horror/amazement as the green glow traveled up her arm, spreading to enwrap her in a brilliant glow. And the humming started…

The rest of the group, as much as they would have loved to bolt, remained in their spots as though somebody had duct-taped them to the ground. Well, they remained in their spots until some supernatural force gripped them and pulled them from the ground and letting them aimlessly drift in the air as the glow spread to all of them. Soon there were several very bright seniors, one florescent freshman, and a rather brilliant Secret Device all floating in the air, discombobulated at best.

"Uhhh…I don't think this was supposed to happen today, do you, Lisa?" Trisha asked worriedly as they started to drift higher.

The hum grew louder as Jenn pointed to the object Trisha had lugged down with them and nearly shouted, "Hey! It's getting away! You need to weigh it down!"

"With what?" Trisha snapped back. The rest of the group looked around (minus Elyse, who was still attached the wall by her very, very brilliant hand) for something to hold down their prized object with. Lisa was the first to come up with a solution. She plucked the freshman from the air and plunked her directly into the R2-D2 cooler, slapping the clear plastic lid on over her.

"You're lucky that thing has air-holes," she told the freshman, who glared balefully. She was quite pleased to see that her idea worked. The R2-D2 cooler was definitely not going anywhere any time soon.

****

12:28 p. m., Monday

Freshmen Hideaways

Team Green Rescue Team Two

Amethyst let Gina and Rachel lead the way into the hideaway while she looked about for the missing saxophone regiment. "Guess Rand was right," she muttered to herself as she climbed into the hideaway. "The whole section got captured. We'll have to save them later." She shouldered the pack she had brought along and helped the two freshman move the heavy door back into place.

Luckily, the seniors had left an obvious path. "Look," Gina remarked, pointing as they came to the staircase that had obviously been the route. "There are the tracks from the cooler."

Amethyst, who knew of the seniors plan to capture Tiny Travis (as she had began calling him) in the cooler, only nodded and followed the two freshman down the stairs, carefully avoiding broken steps. She wondered who had traveled this same route in years gone, and shivered. Most of them probably would be dead by now—the school had sealed off these ways using electronics. Luckily, Rand had busted those codes and now they were traveling into the belfry beneath the school. The thought was enough to make her shiver again.

"Cold, Ame?" Rachel asked.

"No, no, I'm fine. Just thinking," Amethyst replied quickly, caught off guard (pun intended, hee hee). "Are we getting close to where the seniors are?" she asked Gina.

Ginny's look was clearly, "How do you expect _me_ to know?"

Amethyst was caught between a laugh and a sigh. "Never mind." They traveled in a comfortable silence until they reached the bottom of the steps (with some difficulty; Amethyst stumbled twice and Rachel and Gina nearly tumbled down when Rachel tripped on the hem of her jeans). "My dance-shoes are never going to be clean again." The floor was covered in dust, cobwebs, and who knew what else. Mummy remains? Amethyst, who normally kept he dance-shoes impeccably clean, had no desire to touch them now as they followed the footprints of the seniors.

"Creepy," was Rachel's remark to the hieroglyphics on the wall. Amethyst supposed that the color had once been very bright and harsh, but it had darkened with time and age. She studied a couple of the symbols in fascination.

"That's a French horn!" she cried in delight at one point. "Laiva plays that. And look…a flute!" Both she and Gina played flute, so this was a very happy thing for the two of them.

"Is there a trumpet?" Rachel asked, now interested in the wall.

"A very crushed one. Under the big boot over there," Gina joked, pointing. "Look, the boot's got a flute insignia on it."

"Ha-ha."

Amethyst opened her mouth to say something, but was stopped when Gina abruptly started to glow. A bright green light burst from the freshman, surrounding all of them in a globe of green. "What's happened?" Gina cried in alarm. She shrieked as her dance-shoes left the ground and she hovered in the air, starting to drift off. Rachel jumped and grabber her arm, but found herself floating, too. They were floating away, Amethyst realized, dismayed. "Quick—grab on, Ame!"

She did as told, performing a mighty leap and snatching Rachel's grimy dance-shoe as Gina started to speed up and away. Something told her that she should have listened to the voice in her head when it had told her not to get out of bed that morning…

****

12:29 p. m., Monday

Ventilation Ducts

Team Green Rescue Team One

Laiva and Eve struggled to keep up with Verran and Solan as the two boys led them on a fast-paced sprint through the underground Ventilation Shafts. Laiva was barely short enough to make clearance under the shaft ceiling. She wondered how Verran ran so quickly with his head and shoulders stooped like that. But then the blond boy looked back and she saw raw worry across his features. He raucously called Autumn's name every few seconds, stopping at every branch off to call once again.

They had encountered one Team Puce member already in the hallway on the way to the shaft entrance in the gym. Laiva felt sorry for the poor thing. Verran, in his craze to get to Autumn, had shoved the poor sophomore into a locker. Eve and Laiva had only waited a moment after that, promising the Pucer that they would be back to set him out and put him in with the real hostages.

"This is it," Verran said, stopping so suddenly that Laiva had to dive sideways to avoid hitting Eve. "I'm sure of it. This is where she fell. AUTUMN!" He slithered down that way carefully, feeling for the hole Autumn had fallen into. The four waited with bated breath for an answer. "AUTUMN!"

"Do you have to shout?" an exasperated voice called back. "I'm quite fine, no thanks to you and your desire to kill my eardrums."

"You're alive?" Verran demanded happily. Laiva suspected that he was crying and thought better of suspecting this—the wall was far too interesting right now.

"Of course, I'm alive, you prat," was the response. "It's a soft landing. Just go ahead and drop!" Shrugging, Verran jumped down into the whole.

"Er, should we give them a moment alone?" Eve asked, grabbing Solan's arm before he followed suit. "I mean, he just believed she was dead. That's kind of traumatic and it would be rude for us to watch."

"Eh." And Solan dropped through the whole.

"Well, anyway," Laiva remarked. "Perhaps we'd better give them a couple of minutes alone—as alone as one gets with Solan in the room—just like you said. I've got cards. Wanna play 'Go Fish?'"

"Do you have 'Old Maid?'" Eve asked eagerly.

****

12:34 p. m., Monday

Crypt

Team Green

Amethyst did not know how long she had been clutching Rachel's dance-shoe before Gina's magical power dragged them to the group they had been looking for. They were all floating somewhere near the ceiling, all of the seniors laughing despite the circumstances. Amethyst could see a cylindrical cooler painted to look like _Star Wars_ droid, R2-D2, floating amongst them. There was something strange about this cooler. It almost appeared that somebody inside was glaring at their group.

A very furious freshman inside, in fact.

"ANDREA!" Gina shouted suddenly, seeing her twin sister stuck inside the cooler. "What have they done to you?" She could hardly talk from laughing so hard. Trapped beneath the plastic, Andrea could only glare at the lot of them (This is not the same Andrea from last chapter. This Andrea plays clarinet, last chapter's played saxophone). If looks could kill, Gina, Rachel, and Amethyst would all be the latest menu items at McDonald's. Amethyst could already imagine it now. _McAme…_

She shuddered and focused on more immediate matters. "What the heck is happening?" she demanded, letting go of Rachel's dance-shoe to find that she could float as well. Very quickly, she levitated upwards so that she was level with the seniors.

"Don't know, don't care," Kelly told her airily. "Elyse set off some sort of mechanism. She _claims_ it was an entrance. I think it's one heck of a magic-trick. Hey, guys, watch out! The cooler's drifting away again!"

"Drat, guess Andrea's not tall enough," Trisha said, popping the lid open and hauling the slight girl out of the cooler. "Hey, Lisa, pass me another freshman. Preferably a taller one."

Lisa, about to wrangle Gina into the cooler despite Amethyst's protests, stopped. Kelly, however, took the opportunity and plunged Rachel into the cooler. Once again, Trisha snapped the lid back on. Now the seniors, Amethyst, and Gina laughed harder. Andrea was too busy glaring to laugh.

"Any progress, Elyse?" Jenn called down.

"I'm telling you, a door should open," Elyse began hotly, stopping short as a door opened and a rectangle of blue light fell across the cobwebby floor. "See?"

All of the seniors, freshmen (including Rachel, staring icily from the cooler), and Amethyst were dropped unceremoniously onto the ground. They looked at the door and then at each other uneasily. "Can't hurt to try," Andrea finally remarked.

There were quite a few nervous laughs as Kelly led the way through the door.

****

12:37 p. m., Monday

Belfry

Team Green Rescue Team One

The mattress was surprisingly soft, as Autumn had assured it would be. Laiva landed with a thud, making dust explode in great clouds from the ancient object, before rolling quickly out of the way so Eve could land. She noticed that Verran had his arm wrapped around Autumn's waist and looked as though he wasn't going to let go any time soon. Solan milled about, gesticulating broadly to nobody in particular as he walked. All of them coughed from the dust as Eve landed.

"Where is this place?" she demanded, rising to her feet.

They were all dusty and Autumn had a cut on her cheek that had been bandaged using a bit of polishing cloth in her pocket. Still, they were all bright-eyed, elated by the news of Autumn's survival. "Somewhere beneath the school, I think. I don't think anybody's been down here in a long time," Autumn began to explain.

"It's strange," Laiva commented. She looked about. They were in what she presumed to be an enormously large room, but her surroundings were too dark for her to be completely sure. A great expanse of a dusty floor stood between her and what she recognized to be an old, dilapidated couch. Cautiously, she moved in that direction but stopped abruptly with a small cry.

"What?" Solan demanded, nearly jumping out of his skin. "What's going on?"

"Autumn, I think you're wrong. There've been somebodies here for a long, long time. And they're waiting for us…"

Everybody exchanged glances.

"With spears," Laiva finished, pointing to the one aimed at her throat. There was a soft noise of pattering feet about them, and the group suddenly found themselves surrounded by dark forms dressed in tattered, gray rags. An ashen-faced young man in his early teens held the spear at Laiva's throat. He was dressed, like his cohorts, in rags, probably bits of clothing that he had scavenged over the years. There was dust all over him—dust crowded into his hair so thickly that Laiva could not tell its original color. He did not seem to mind as he danced about her, still keeping the spear firmly aimed at her throat.

"We're good guys, really," Verran tried arguing with the spear-carrying dust-people dancing about him and Autumn. "Do you guys understand English?"

"I don't think they do," Solan supplied.

"No, no, we speak English," the boy holding the spear at Laiva's throat said suddenly. "We speak English quite well, thank you. And just what are you doing in our caverns? No Up-Worlders allowed. Can't you read the no trespassing signs?" The spear roved away from Laiva's throat to point at a dusty "No Trespassing" sign.

"Sorry, we, erm, must have missed it," Eve said. "We fell in here. Didn't mean to cause trouble or anything."

The boy was silent as he regarded her. "You must be taken to the High Council. They will decide what to do with you. We may even return you to the Up-World."

"And what happens if you decide not to?" Laiva asked.

"We kill you." The boy looked nonchalant as he poked Laiva's shoulder with the spear, steering her towards a door she must have missed on her search of the area. 

"In fact, that's what we'll probably do. Kill you all, I mean."


	5. Crushing Trumpets

A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long. It was rather a pain in the rear. This is the worst chapter that will exist. Next chapter is where the author has a lot of fun. Hang on for the ride. I promise you that once you sit through this, it will get funnier, and better.

****

Chapter Five: Crushing Trumpets 

12:46 p. m., Monday

Crypt

Team Green

"So what exactly was that entrance?" Amethyst asked Elyse. She, Rachel (complete with rolling R2-D2 cooler), and Gina had missed most of Elyse's garble about the supposed entrance, so they had very little knowledge of what they were doing or where they were going.

"I've been searching for it since my sophomore year. You know about the crypt and all, but that's a very inconvenient way to travel," Elyse began explaining. "I mean, teachers get annoyed if you come into their classes smelling like a mummy."

"Gee, really? I thought it was the latest craze," one of the twins (the group had decided to give up telling them apart and merely called them the freshmen) remarked sarcastically. There was a muffled giggle from the cooler, but somebody jumped in front of it to stop Lisa from kicking it. "I think you should leave her be for awhile."

The seniors just ignored her and continued traipsing down the stairs. 

"Well, anyway," Elyse continued, "the entrance was the fabled entrance into a catacomb of tunnels, all of which were used during the first war—the Great Jock War in '86. The jocks created them and completely forgot about them because they were—"

"Smashed out of their minds, we know," Amethyst said, rolling her eyes.

"So I've been searching for these tunnels for a long time. One of the jocks was smart enough to write some hieroglyphics on the walls for any crazy student to decipher. I just happened to be that crazy student."

"So why are we headed _down_ if these tunnels are more convenient than the crypt?" somebody asked. 

"Dumb freshmen," Kelly muttered.

"We should actually be hitting another staircase in a moment—" Elyse began.

"My feet hurt," somebody complained. "How long do we have to go?"

Elyse opened her mouth to answer, but Kelly broke in. "I know! We should throw a rock or something loud down the stairs and hear how long it falls. Anybody got any rocks on them?"

They were unfortunate in the fact that the steps had no rocks or breaks in them. Trisha had a flute case on her, but she stoutly refused to throw that. It was up to Lisa once again to come up with a solution. Sighing, whether from happiness or glee, she nudged Kelly. Grinning like incredibly scary twin Cheshire cats, the two shoved the R2-D2 cooler off the step, watching it bounce and clatter and listening to Rachel's indignant squawks. They heard an almighty thump and then silence. "How long?" Kelly called.

"Two flights, maybe three," was the weak reply. "I think something's broken. Like my spine!"

That spurred the group to hurry down the stairs to where Rachel was crawling shakily out of the cooler. "I hate you all," she swore dizzily and staggered. The twins held her up until the world righted itself about her and the little purple monkeys stopped dancing.

"Why? I should think that rolling down the stairs like that would have been fun," Trisha said as she brushed past. "Here's the staircase you were talking about, Elyse. Go up, right?"

"Why?" They had been walking in one great mass, but now the tunnel was narrowing about them, so they walked in groups of three. Now Elyse reached for the wall with one hand—

"Wait! As much as I love leaving the ground, I really don't want a repeat performance of the Crypt," Ashley stopped her.

Elyse continued to reach for the wall—

"I don't think this is a good idea, Elyse."

—and grasped something tightly. "Everybody hold onto somebody or something." Immediately, they latched hands and gripped the R2-D2 cooler. "Okay, here we go…"

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Rachel said wisely.

"Shut up, Solo," somebody muttered.

Amethyst opened her mouth to comment, but was cut off as the world quite abruptly and suddenly exploded.

There was a ghastly silence.

There was a ghastly noise.

There was a ghastly silence.

****

12:58 p. m., Monday

Adobe's Classroom

Team Green

Sebras was thrown from his stool and dumped unceremoniously on the tiling as the entire school shook tremendously. "What?" he cried just as the school shook again, dislodging the Jolly Green Giant from its smug position and throwing it against the whiteboard with a loud CRACK! A third and final shake threw the contents of the chessboard all over Sebras and Becky, lying a few feet away. "Ugh."

"What's going on?" Rand demanded when they were sure the shaking had stopped. Somehow, he had managed to stay in his chair, although it had rolled halfway across the room.

"No idea," Meg managed to get out. She brushed herself off and glanced about.

"Unless somebody was blowing up leaves in the backyard," Sebras muttered. "Valuable life lesson: A big pile of leaves, a lighter, and gasoline do NOT go well together." He rubbed the back of his neck where the rook from the chess game, Ariel the Little Mermaid, had hit him. All present in the room grumbled as they picked up pieces of whatever they were doing and cleaned up spilled Mountain Dew. Sebras had kept several runners on the move for Mountain Dew so that they could remain awake through the tedious battles. It was working apparently—twelve hostages from Team Puce were under Gabi's watchful eye.

"Team Green! Team Green!" something chirped in the darkness. It took the group a moment of searching that the chirping was coming from Meg.

Or, more precisely, from a walkie-talkie attached to Meg's belt. 

Meg immediately yanked it off. "Autumn?" she demanded eagerly.

"Er—nope."

"Gabi?"

"I'm sorry, no cigar for you."

"Who is it, then?" Meg said, her stomach growing icy. All around her, people stood in tense positions and stared at her. Deep inside, they all knew who it was.

"Hey, this is Travis. I found this on one of the sophomores we apprehended—I think her name is Alyssa—and just wanted you to know. Oh, yes, and according to our calculations, we have over a quarter of your men in captivity. They're all crying for you now, Sebras. I think they might join up with Team Puce." Travis paused dramatically before rambling on a different string, "Boy, your saxophone regiment is gullible. Do you not feed your men, Sebras? They came with just one sniff of a candy bar."

"Jerk," Sebras growled under his breath.

"At least we on Team Puce feed our men," Travis continued, not hearing Sebras.

"Yeah, but on Team Green, we feed our women, too," Meg broke in savagely. "Don't look behind you, Travis. Here we come!" She continued in a high-pitched voice. There was a pause as Travis looked behind him and swore. Meg clicked the walkie-talkie off. "Man, that guy annoys me." 

****

3:57 p. m., Monday

Tunnel

Team Green

"What do you mean, you have the old maid?" Eve demanded. "_I_ have the old maid!"

"What? You're crazy!" Laiva returned. She held up a 'Joker' card. "Joker's the old maid, remember? Did you forget how to read the cards?"

Eve's only response was to flash another 'Joker' card at Laiva. "Oh, dear," said Laiva mournfully, "I do believe I forgot to remove one from the deck…"

The strange dust-people had led them down a straight tunnel hewn completely from stone. Dusty wooden posts supported the tunnel every few feet and torches in sconces lit their way. Laiva, who had, after years of marching, learned how to judge how long she had walked by the soreness in her feet, figured that they had walked for well over an hour, maybe two. She wasn't used to marching on rock, after all, although the practice field could compare quite well. She was able to judge that they had just gone down a winding, narrow path, although she wasn't sure where they were now. Several of the dust-people had broken off and left them guarded by a small ring of adolescents. So they decided to sit down and enjoy some nice card games.

"Wow, I guess you're both old maids," Verran commented, gathering up his piles of pairs. They handed the cards to Autumn, who dealt them out one card each. From somewhere, she pulled out four spoons. Verran, Solan, and Laiva gaped at them, wondering what they were for, but Eve grinned.

"Spooooons," she crooned.

Autumn was starting to set the spoons out in front of the group when the young leader returned with the rest of the men. His set of rags was looking dustier than ever and his hair was, if possible, dirtier now. "Come on," he grunted to them. "The portal's just up here. I daresay you're in for a bit of a shock." With the first change of expression the group had seen from him, he grinned fiendishly and gestured for them to follow. With sore legs, the five youths climbed to their feet and trotted along after him, all in step.

'Just up here' turned out to be a twenty-minute walk. After about five minutes of silence, Laiva grew bored and slipped up beside the leader. From this distance, she could see a silver pendant about his neck on a thin chain. One word was blazoned across in green. "So…Lewis," Laiva began, reading the pendant.

"That's not me," the leader said shortly. "I'm Shane."

"Okay, then, _Shane_," Laiva agreed. "Where are we headed?" she asked, hoping for a definite name so she could stop calling it 'The Place That We Will Soon Arrive At.'

Instead of an answer, however, she got a spear pointed at her throat. Taking the implied message, she slipped meekly back into place beside Eve. Shane's eyes, a pale, ugly brown, followed her.

They walked in silence for a time until the path took a sharp drop and rounded a harsh corner. Before they rounded the corner, however, Shane stopped them and stared solemnly about. "Many Up-Worlders don't get past this point ever again," he began.

"So we gathered," Solan said dryly, "from the 'We'll probably kill you.'"

Shane ignored him.

"What I'm trying to say is that we're not as mean as we say we are—"

"You know, in the Up-World, we consider it rude to point spears in people's faces. If you feel like going out on a limb, you could even call it 'mean,'" Verran pointed out.

Shane ignored him, too.

"—And even though we've been a bit…abrupt with you—"

"Milk it up, Shaney-Boy, milk it up," Laiva muttered.

"—We're not that bad. So, in short—"

"Without the speech, please," Eve commented.

"—Welcome to the Down-World. Heaven under earth." Shane flourished his dusty hands and waved them forward around the bend.

****

4:02 p. m., Monday

Dark Place

Team Green Seniors, Amethyst, and Freshmen

"Look at the pretty purple monkeys dance," somebody to Amethyst's left murmured deliriously. The junior, who had been known to keep a cooler head in situations just a strange as this (she HAD dated two percussionists…well, one percussionist and a quasi-drummer, quasi-trumpeter), opened her eyes and stared straight up. If she had been able to see in the darkness, she would have noticed a rough ceiling carved from jagged stone only five feet above where she was lying prone to the world.

She struggled to roll over and found that incredibly difficult. Somebody had landed with one leg and an elbow atop her. After the world had blown up, or something close to it to Amethyst's head, at least, they had been flung magically through a roller coaster of tunnels. Everything was now a blur, but she could vaguely remember a spout of flame here, a sharp turn there…

Grumbling, she pried the leg and elbow off and sat up, still trying to see through the darkness. She could hear breathing, made louder by the strange effects of the tunnel, and could feel warmth from nine different bodies all strewn about. Well, eight bodies besides hers. The cooler had rolled to a stop a bit down the tunnel; she could see the silhouette. Directly beside her, Rachel (with a swelling bruise on one cheek) muttered sleepily about monkeys and flying chimneys. On Amethyst's other side was a tangled mass of limbs that she figured was probably Lisa. She wasn't sure if it was wise to wake Lisa yet; was the senior a morning person?

Elyse was tossed carelessly across her feet, which Amethyst could not feel. Stretching, Amethyst leaned forward and tapped the senior, trying to be gentle as she did so. "G'way," Elyse groaned. "I'm sleeping, Dad."

Somebody on the other side of the pile clearly stated, "Wha—teletubbie?" and fell back asleep.

Amethyst tapped harder. "Elyse! Wake up NOW!"

Elyse promptly did a very good imitation of somebody who was trying very hard to jump out of her skin. Grumbling with embarrassment, she sat up—or at least tried to. Rachel had both feet atop her stomach, making it very hard to move, much less breathe. She glared when she realized that Amethyst was grinning cheekily at her. "Is Elyse not a morning person?" Amethyst asked in her 'talking to small children and color guard captains' voice.

"Yes, I'm a morning person! I'm a very BIG morning person!" Elyse protested crankily, struggling to free her right arm from underneath Jenn. 

"After about two pots of coffee, that is," Rachel commented in a drowsily sarcastic voice. She promptly fell asleep again.

"Where are we?" Amethyst demanded as Elyse finally managed to sit up.

"I'd imagine we're in the tunnels. I guess I forgot to tell you about the part where we get thrown on a ride that nearly kills us. Figures. Bit of a nasty trip, it was." Elyse leaned over and shook Lisa (whom Amethyst could now recognize from the locks of dark brown hair sticking up from underneath the mass). "Wake up, lout."

"Wakey-wakey," Amethyst told Rachel, who just grunted and rolled away. Unfortunately, she rolled straight into Kelly, who shoved her away as a reflex. THIS woke Lisa, for Rachel was pushed right into Amethyst and the two managed to land on Lisa. Lisa in turn pushed both arms against Amethyst and sent her flying straight onto Ashley, who coughed and shrieked loud enough to wake the dead. THAT made Trisha shriek as well and the twins, on either side of her, jumped and accidentally knocked heads as they scrambled to their feet. 

In the end, several people clutched their heads in pain while Lisa slept on, unperturbed by what was going on about her.

Finally, after waking a very stubborn Lisa, the group all managed to collect themselves and wait for Elyse to give them directions. "We're right underneath the Red Wing," she explained after a minute of reading the hieroglyphics printed across the tunnel walls. Amethyst saw what she suspected to be a Florence Flask atop of an English book. Of course. The Florence Flask would represent a chemistry class (The upstairs Red Wing was the science wing) and the book would represent an English class (the downstairs Red Wing was the English wing). "Let's go that way." She pointed and the group set off.

"So now that we've found the secret passages beneath the school, what are we going to do to get Travis in here?" Jenn asked, pointing to the cooler trundling along behind her. "He'll be in the Band Room, we know that."

"Guarded by a very large Team Puce," Elyse added. "Hmm…I dunno. I guess we'll think of that when we get there. We have duct tape—" and Kelly held up the roll, grinning devilishly—"and a cooler. I figure, we can do anything with those two things."

They nodded and traveled in silence until Elyse suddenly said, "Stop! I think we're here!"

"That's great," Kelly announced, "but where is 'here,' exactly?" Elyse looked slightly flustered at this, but the rest saw the truth in Kelly's words. 'Here' was a stone tunnel that looked exactly like every tunnel they had been through. The hieroglyphics splayed across the entire wall, somehow larger and more erratic than they had been before. Looking over, Amethyst could see a large boot spray-painted on, with a silver line up the middle that could only be a flute. Underneath the boot was a very flat instrument that could only be a trumpet. She caught Gina's eye (she was the only one who could tell the twins apart, but she wasn't going to help the seniors out by letting them know THAT) and the two laughed.

"Underneath the practice rooms," Elyse explained simply. She pointed at the wall. "See, the entrance into to the Large Practice Room is right there. Don't any of you hear that?" After a moment of silence, Amethyst heard what she was talking about: screeching, awful, horribly loud screeching that could mean only one thing…"Trumpets," Elyse finished grimly. "They've been giving me a headache for the past five minutes." 

Amethyst winced as one of the trumpets (Travis, probably, to judge by the lack of tone and the fact that he was half a beat off from the other trumpets) hit a particularly loud and screaming note. "The hostages are probably being kept in the practice rooms," Amethyst said loudly, more to drown out the trumpets than anything. Even her ex-boyfriend played better than THAT!

"And that means that the members of Team Puce are torturing them," Ashley finished for her. "If my co-captain Andrea were here—"

"Entire saxophone regiment was captured," the other Andrea, who played clarinet and happened to be Gina's twin, chirped. "So, she IS here. Well, up there." And she pointed to the ceiling.

Ashley's eyes widened. "Let's do it," she whispered dangerously.

"Do what?"

"Let me handle this." Ashley looked about the group, sizing them up and down. Finally, she seemed to make a decision. "Jenn, Kelly, I need some femalepower backup, so you'll come with me. Amethyst, you and the freshmen will go with Elyse since you're all bone thin. Lisa, Trisha, I'm trusting you two to pick up the garbage, right?" 

"Er—what are we doing exactly?" Lisa asked. She still looked a bit grumpy at having been woken up.

"Jenn, Kelly, and I will enter through the entrance into the band room from the tunnels. There is a separate entrance there, right?" Ashley began, glancing at Elyse for confirmation. When the captain nodded, she continued, "We'll enter through and send Elyse's group a signal. You'll all scramble up through the entrance. Get Travis. Elyse—that's you. Get Travis. Shove him into the tunnel—Trisha, Lisa, you get him tied up and into the cooler."

Trisha and Lisa both grinned. "Cool."

"Give me two minutes," Ashley said, and she, Kelly, and Jenn ducked into a separate tunnel.

****

4:13 p. m., Monday

Practice Room

Team Puce

"No! No! No! It's eighth-eight-dotted quarter!" Travis snapped to Alex, and Mike, who rolled their eyes at him and tried again. Like the previous twelve times they played this simple measure, the rhythm came out entirely wrong. The captives, who were clustered against the far wall in an attempt to get away, all cringed and moaned. Plans of escape had been given up hours before in place of gnawing arms and legs off. Several people were lying on the floor in near-catatonic states, with the strong-willed captives leaning over them worriedly. "I don't think he's going to make it," was heard in the two-measure rest as the trumpets paused.

"They've been doing this for two hours. Do you think they'll ever stop?" Krista, the first captive taken, asked Andrea, the Pseudo-Saxophone-Leader (AN: From now on, so that there's no confusion, everybody will call her Andrea II).

Andrea, curled up in a fetal position, did not answer.

"Okay, guys, one-two, one-two-three—" Travis began.

"Hold it right there, bud, I don't want to hear that again." Immediately, every eye in the room flew to where a senior—Krista couldn't remember her name. Was it Alice? April?—leaned confidently against the doorframe. "Have you considered getting a mute?" Bending, she scooped one from the floor and flung it at the shocked Travis, who caught it after it bounced off of his nose. "It might improve your sound quality, you know. Of course, playing into a swimming pool might have a better effect."

Travis growled. "Get her, boys!" Immediately, Mike and Alex sprang from their chairs to do his bidding, but the door swung open to admit two seniors, Jenn and Kelly. Kelly was on the Varsity Basketball team and had a foot in height gain over either Alex or Mike, and two feet over Travis. Jenn just managed to look really mean and quite fierce, which did not couple with the green "I'm an Angel" shirt she wore.

"What were you saying, Travis?"

Travis whirled to see Amethyst, a fellow junior, rising out of the trap door and smiling innocently. She was flanked by a set of identical twins, who smirked at him as they took positions behind Amethyst. Rachel, Travis's ex-girlfriend, rose through the passage next, before spindly Elyse popped through and joined the twins in smirking at the now helpless Travis, Mike, and Alex. Indeed, even the hostages had stood up, looking pale but determined as they stared down the three Team Puce leaders.

"Put the trumpets down, boys," Elyse commanded. "We'll take care of the hostages from here." Andrea II immediately took the initiative and stood behind Ashley, glaring at Travis. To Amethyst, she whispered: "Get Travis quickly. Team Puce will show up at any moment. Speed is essential." As Jenn and Kelly took the trumpets from Mike and Alex, the twins and Rachel herded hostages into the trap door. Amethyst moved forward to take Travis's trumpet—

—And all Hell broke loose.

Travis, who was small but surprisingly wiry and fast, swung his trumpet and smacked Amethyst solidly upside the head. As she fell, Team Green moved into action. Rachel yelled and leapt into a flying kick, catching Travis right in the stomach. He tried to fend her off, but was blocked by both of the twins, who sent him down hard in identical flying tackles. Elyse made a lunge to grab his arm so that she could ship him down to Lisa and Trisha. She missed. Alex and Mike used the opportunity to grab their trumpets, but only Alex succeeded. Mike found Elyse's hand wrapped around his neck just as he lunged, knocking him flat to the ground right over the trap door. Lisa and Trisha hauled him through.

Krista scrambled underneath the fighting figures and pulled Amethyst to the trap door, sending her through after Mike. There was an outraged shout as Lisa appeared, wild-eyed and red-faced. "Who hurt Amethyst?" she demanded into the sudden silence. All fingers pointed to Travis, who scampered back, whimpering. Nobody had quite seen Lisa like this before. The senior's hair was in disarray, framing a face flushed with anger, and her fists were clenched about what appeared to be an imaginary flagpole. There was not one person who didn't feel sorry for Travis in that room just then.

Travis was spared from Lisa's wrath, however, by Alex. Before anybody could stop the junior, Alex had leaped over two people and clamped a hold on Andrea II's arm, his trumpet raised threateningly to her ear. He looked ready to blast out a high G and kill Andrea II's hope of hearing. Travis sighed in relief and barked, "Team Green! Drop your weapons!"

"What weapons?" Elyse asked. It was true. None of the Team Green members held so much as a piccolo.

"Well—uh—then, put your hands on your heads."

Nobody moved.

"I mean it!"

Once again, nobody moved. 

Finally, Elyse said, "You wouldn't do it. You wouldn't. O'Malley would KILL you. Remember Eloise, the one-time bass clarinetist? O'Malley said that if you kill another band member's eardrums, he's suspending you from band."

Alex's trumpet wavered.

"Seriously, man, let her go," Lisa snarled, and charged forward. Perhaps Alex took Elyse's warning seriously or perhaps he was just knocked off guard, because he did not let out the blast that was promised and instead dropped his trumpet. Lisa took that opportunity to haul Andrea II out of his grip and kick him. Rachel did likewise to Travis before Lisa said, "Let's get out of here and get back to base. Let's not waste our time with this filth." She kicked Travis for good measure on the way to the trapdoor and disappeared, still hauling Andrea II after her. Slowly, the hostages trickled into the passage until it was just Elyse, Ashley, Alex, and Travis left in the room.

"You may have won the battle, but you haven't won the war," Travis groaned as Ashley disappeared into the trapdoor.

"Yet." And Elyse was gone, with the promise of a return hanging in the air.


	6. In the Office

Chapter Six: In the Office

A brief author's interlude:

The adventures of Laiva and co. are getting frightening. Team Green is starting to lose control Captive are starting to lose eardrums. Things are looking bad for our protagonists. 

And the force with the possibility to change it all is stirring slowly and sleepily. Strains of music drift about her, a softly plucked guitar accompanied by the hum of voices and bongo drums. A high tenor starts to sing, lulling those listening to deep sleep.

__

In the office, the director's office,

The 'major sleeps away

In the office, the quiet office

The 'major sleeps awaaaaay

*

Vanessa, Head Drum Major of the Marching Eagles, rolled over onto her back and stared upwards blankly. Where was she again? The ceiling she was staring at was unlike any ceiling in her house. And her back and legs hurt from sleeping so long on such hard tile…tile? Wait a minute. Vanessa's house did NOT have tile in it. Where was she?!

Like a color guard pole on a trumpet player, it hit her. She was in the Band Office! One glance at the clock (the hands were clarinets, flutes, and oboes on every clock in the band room) told her that she had been asleep for nearly ten hours. Must have been tired, she thought to herself as she managed to sit up. She had fallen asleep after the rest of the band had chased off to have some sort of silly war, hadn't she? They'd probably be long gone by now—maybe she should just head home.

The clattering of keys on a keyboard in the otherwise empty room brought her to sharper reality. "Hello?" The office was indeed empty, save for her, music files, a cluttered desk (with a missing stash of chocolate oranges), a chocolate orange slice, and a computer. There was no other living thing in here, and the office was soundproof, so why was she hearing keys clicking?

Vanessa stood up, stretching as she walked to the computer. Her eyes widened. The keys were clicking and moving, being pushed in, but there was nobody there! A message typed rapidly across a Word processor document.

__

It came to pass just before the days of the final band war that bad trumpets should overpower, but lack the intelligence to rule. In that mindset, the clarinets rose up, but were too feeble of an instrument to fight back. Even backed by the flutes, they were no match for the rather ignorant rulers.

Finally, a new group came into play, powerful yet suave. They were well-liked by everybody, including the percussionists (who, after the Great Defeat in the Year of the Sophomore, slunk back into the corners and watched, waiting for a chance to attack), but not the trumpets. In fact, most of the trumpets hated the new group with a passion, but the few trumpets that were good and intelligence allied themselves to this new group.

And so the Saxophone/French Horn troops arose—

"Freaky." Vanessa rolled her eyes at the message. Dumb prophesizing freaks.

A high-pitched whine broke her train of thought just then, followed quickly by a wave of static. Before Vanessa could react so much as a yell, a loud guitar burst in. She winced away, nearly deafened. "HELLO? OW!"

The guitar immediately stopped. **Is that too loud?** A voice boomed out around her, exuding from everything—the computer, the walls, the floor, the ceiling tiles, the little piece of chocolate orange on the floor, even from Vanessa herself.

"Yeah!" Vanessa snapped indignantly, looking about for the source. "WAY too loud! What song was it, anyway?"

****

Er, it's a song I love. This whole chapter's supposed to be written to a soundtrack. That song is "Bang" by Eve 6.

Vanessa was still turning around, looking for the source of the voice. "Chapter?" she asked curiously. The voice apparently was not in the band room—only in the office.

"I heard a bang, the stars collided, your breath drew me in just like a magnet…" a voice sang distantly.

****

Yeah. This is a Chapter, Chapter Six. You're a character. I need to talk to you.

Vanessa snorted. "Uh-huh, sure. I'm a character in some little prissy teenager's novel, am I? Why don't you pick somebody interesting, for a change? You always pick on me! You don't need to remind that I have no life, whoever you are! If this is some sort of joke—"

****

It's not a joke. I'm serious. I can make you do anything.

"I don't believe you."

And suddenly, the band office disappeared. In fact, everything disappeared—except for Vanessa, who stood, amazingly enough, on a plane of white. Well, she made the pretense of standing—she could have stood upside down and it would not have been any different. Everything was incredibly bleak and white. "Okay," she finally agreed feebly. "I believe you."

****

Thank you. The band office reappeared, as well as a dinner for Vanessa. **You need to move quickly. Team Puce will be making a major attack on Team Green in approximately seven minutes and fifteen seconds. I've unlocked the color guard cabinet using my guide to author's rights. You know what to do.**

Vanessa nodded to show that she had heard. With a blink of an eye, the music stopped completely. "Thank heavens, the song was horrible."

****

I heard that.

Vanessa's only response was to roll her eyes. Quickly, she downed a couple of bites of the dinner provided and sneaked to the band office door. Team Puce could be seen through the Plexiglas, making last minute preparations for their next attack. Vanessa smiled at the challenge—this would be her time to shine. Before she could move, however, the door opened.

Brorby, the spy for Team Green, entered, apparently deep in thought. In one hand, he clutched a manila envelope and a sheath of music. "Blasted idiot," he swore under his breath. Not noticing Vanessa, he crossed immediately the computer, innocently blank of any message. The author must have wiped that out. HotChat was pulled up and a message was sent off before Vanessa so much as cleared her throat. Brorby turned, confused. "Yes? Oh, you're the one the author planned to foil Team Puce's greatest plot. Better get on it. And support Brorbism."

Vanessa snorted—the chances of that happening where about equal to the chances of the band forming a straight company front. Still, she swung off of the desk she had been sitting on and checked out the door. The Band Room was empty, thankfully. Like any good movie spy, she sneaked across the room and gave the door one good tug. Just as the author had said, the door swung open easily.

A plethora of color guard riches stared back at her. She strapped sabers on, shouldered rifles, grabbed armloads of flags. (A/N: So what if our band doesn't have sabers? Doesn't stop me!!) Sneaking out of the band room proved quite easy.

Finally, Team Green had something going in their favor.

And Vanessa was awake.

  
  
A/N: This chapter was written just for Vanessa! Rock on, Drummie! Like it? Don't take it.


	7. Legends, Ski, and Bandages

****

12:04 a. m., Tuesday

Adobe's Classroom

Team Green

She had never quite felt like this before.

In fact, she was only sure of one thing—the Percussion section had somehow managed to pry her skull open and crawl in with a full load of timpani drums. What's more, they had somehow attempted to get into a contest—who could play the loudest.

Amethyst groaned and clenched her eyes shut. Even when she had been knocked out by a rogue flagpole, she had never felt this horrible.

"Ame?" a voice asked softly. "Are you awake?"

For a long moment, she was tempted to just play dead. Then, sighing, she decided against it. "Yeah, I'm awake." Her voice rasped as she struggled to open first her left eye, then her right. SHE was a true band student. To her surprise, it was dark all around her. That was probably a good thing—light would have seared her corneas to bits, she was sure. "Hello? Where am I?"

Something cool and wet pressed against the side of her head. "Adobe's classroom. In the science wing. Shh. Keep quiet—we're hiding out. Travis just did a major revenge mission and captured half of our team."

"Wha—who?" Amethyst struggled to sit up, but a firm hand pressed her shoulder to the ground, keeping her lying down. Finally, she sighed and gave up, still trying to blink in the darkness. "I can't see anything."

"That's because we've got a bandage over your eyes to block out light. Shh. We've got to keep quiet."

"Well, at least tell me who's holding me down," Amethyst grumbled quietly. She hated being in the dark almost as much as she hated the timpani jamming underneath her skull.

"It's Elyse. The colorguard are all taking turns watching over you. You might want to get some sleep or something until we can get some Tylonel." Amethyst could almost see the bookish Colorguard Captain in her mind, trying to hold down an unwilling member of her colorguard troops. As Elyse dwarfed Amethyst in height by at least a foot and a half, Amethyst was quite sure she didn't have any trouble.

"Here," another voice joined them. "Give her some of this stuff. It's magic, I swear." Amethyst distinctly heard the crisp sound of a soda can opening nearby. "Open your mouth, Ame." She did so, rather unwillingly, and nearly gagged on the sugary liquid that poured down her throat. Before long, however, the timpani vanished, leaving Amethyst's head clear.

She worked her jaw, struggling to sit up once again and finding a new spring of energy. "Wow. That's great stuff."

"Ski. It does a Bandie good. Now let's get those bandages off of you." Fingers pried the darkness away from Amethyst's eyes, revealing to her Elyse and Lisa. Lisa was holding a half-empty Ski bottle in her hand and grinning like a cheesy commercial. "Feeling better?"

"Loads, actually," Amethyst admitted through a grin. "What's going on?" They were in Adobe's office, where all of the chemicals were kept for the Honors Chemistry II classes. Amethyst could see most of the colorguard ranks sprawled across the floors and counters nearby—one of her own freshmen was sacked out only a few feet away.

"It's about midnight. Team Puce is sleeping cos they called a temporary truce until eight a. m. tomorrow," Elyse explained in a low voice. "We don't trust them, so we're all hiding out in different places. This is Adobe's office, as you know. The rest of Team Green is scattered throughout the school."

"How long was I out?" Amethyst asked through a jaw-cracking yawn.

"Eight or nine hours." Lisa shrugged. "We managed to capture Mike after Travis knocked you out with his trumpet. Team Puce retaliated SOMEHOW, we're not sure, and now half of Team Green is missing. Of course, a few members disappeared after that Autumn kid disappeared."

"What? Autumn's missing?" Autumn was a good friend of Amethyst's.

"Yeah—and Eve, Solan, Verran, and Laiva." Amethyst sucked in a shaky breath. Not only was Autumn gone, but Solan (Amethyst's boyfriend) and Eve (Amethyst's "Liebling") were, too.

"You're sure Team Puce doesn't have them?" Amethyst demanded. Lisa nodded. Amethyst swore. "Great, now what have we gotten ourselves into?"

Nearby, one of Amethyst's freshmen mumbled in her sleep.

****

12:10 a. m., Tuesday

The Down-World

Team Green Rescue Team Two

Nearby, Shane grunted in his sleep.

"This is great, just great. What have we gotten ourselves into?" Laiva whined, standing and pacing for about the third time in that many hours. "I mean, a James Bond mission in O'Malley's office was no big deal, but now look at us."

"Will you STOP that?" Eve snapped, rubbing at her velvet cloak. Laiva's pacing was annoying her beyond all reason, if this cloak didn't manage first. "It's not as bad as you think."

"Not as bad as I think?" Laiva demanded, ignoring the fact that Verran, Solan, and Autumn were all sacked out on different couches respectively. "I'm in another dimension while my boyfriend is trying to lead a team that is hopeless against all odds to victory at the cost of a two-thousand dollar trumpet. I'm wearing clothing that I would never have dreamed existed, and I'm walking a dream. Not as bad as I think?"

"Hey, the clothing's nice," Autumn muttered sleepily from her couch (a fuzzy ordeal printed with several garishly colored clarinets). She was wrapped in her own cloak—a much lighter version of Eve's—and looking perfectly contented. A couch away, Verran mumbled something and burrowed into his Maestro's jacket.

The portal had been, as Shane had said, nothing as they had expected. Rounding an ordinary bend in a tunnel that Laiva had never dreamed existed had dropped them on the front mat of a bright green door. What's more, the door was hovering in mid-air, and glowing. On the door had been a rustically painted sign—a Fermata. "Hold me, I'm a Fermata?" Verran had ventured to guess.

Shane had rolled his eyes and pushed them towards the door, Eve first. Before going through, Laiva had been wearing a pair of baggy black pants, a smoke-colored shirt, an oiled leather jacket nicked from her father, and scuffed combat boots. She had been standing in a tunnel hewn roughly and carelessly from stone. Upon climbing through the door and feeling the dark tingle throughout her body, she had found herself standing beside Eve on a plane of green grass and brilliant sunshine. She had also found herself in a comfortable pair of expensive jeans, an oiled leather jacket with silver cufflinks and dragons imprinted on the sleeves, and glossy combat boots. Somehow, the door had upgraded her to a more expensive Laiva.

The others had turned out similarly. Both Solan and Verran had appeared in suits, with coattails and everything. Verran had even had a cane. Autumn and Eve, both wearing letterman jackets and jeans, had shown up in outfits similar to Laiva's own—expensive jeans, nice shoes, and beautiful cloaks. Eve had a bassoon strapped over her shoulder—Autumn a clarinet. Laiva carried a very rudimentary hunting horn on a garishly bright strap.

And then Shane had appeared.

He had been dusty and ugly in the regular world, his only distinguishing feature a red sash amid a cobbled outfit of gray rags. Now he was attired in a tailored green uniform, with a dark sash running across his midsection and several medals gleaming in the sunlight. His eyes had become amber, his hair a fine golden color. A strong jaw and straight nose accompanied an angular face and muscular body.

Eve's mouth had nearly dropped open. Laiva had snickered into the back of her hand—Shane still had a spear. The pendant on his neck reading "Lewis" only seemed to be brighter.

"Come," he told them simply, gesturing for his impeccably-dressed men to lead the way. "We head to the High Council now." He seemed to have trouble forcing that one sentence out.

They had walked for who knew how long, the nice shoes springing on the lush grass. The field eventually molded into the outskirts of a city, growing until they walked through metropolis itself. The group passed not a soul as they traipsed along. A couple of Shane's men excused themselves and left the group to step into a pub as they walked. Finally, Shane stopped them and pointed at a building. "You sleep there," he muttered. "Follow."

Bewildered, the group followed him into the building, walking up several flights of stairs until Shane led them into a large room with six couches. "I guard," he explained, waving off the remainder of his men. "You stay until council sees."

They had been in that room for three hours now. Three long hours of being cooped up together, worried sick, without food and with a silent guard. Needless to say, Laiva wasn't in the best of mindsets. "We've got to get out of here," she decided. "Before they decide to kill us."

Shane lifted his head at this comment. "No Down kill," he muttered in his confused way. "We no kill you. We experiment."

"What happened to this guy?" Eve asked in a low voice as Laiva moved to her own couch. "He spoke such good English in our world, why can't he speak it here?"

"Maybe it has a bad effect on language for the natives," Laiva suggested with a shrug. "I don't really care, he can stutter all he wants." She hummed under her breath, bored and not in the least bit sleepy.

Eve waited for her to fall asleep before turning to their guard. "Shane?" she called hesitantly. "Do you understand me?" The guard bobbed his head once, his nearly-empty eyes watching her closely. "Figures, when he's ugly, he's smart, but when he's cute, he's dumb as a brick," Eve muttered to herself. "Where are we?"

"City," Shane answered absently. He seemed to think and added, "Capital City."

__

Oh, good, a start. "Are we here to see the High Council?" A nod from the guard. "Is Lewis on the Council?" Even though she was across the room, she could still see the name blazoning out at her.

"No—Lewis—Legend. Lewis…is…Legend," Shane attempted, looking annoyed at his inability to speak on an intelligent level. _A ha,_ Eve thought. So Shane could understand her, but not talk to his comprehension. She could have some fun with this.

"A Legend?"

"Yes—Lewis. He…save…band."

__

We're getting somewhere. So this Lewis saved a band, did he? Maybe we can use him to convince the Council that we're okay—he IS a band student…

Laiva snorted in her sleep. "…Pickles…"

"So, Lewis saved the band?" Eve pursued.

Shane grunted at this, looking annoyed at something or other, and stood up. He held out a hand and reached into a pouch, withdrawing a dog-eared book. "Here, read. About Lewis." He flipped to a page and held the book out to Eve, who took it with hesitant hands.

"_In the days of the Great Jock War, in '86, the band students formed a league of Legends to call on in times of trouble. The nine legends, each to his or her own instrument, were created in the Great Band Tomes. They are headed up by Trumpet-Legend, Lewis. If a band finds itself in trouble, all one would have to do is call upon the legends using the instructions in _Great Music Theory_, the Tome in which the instructions are located. Two copies of this Tome existed until the Great Jock War. When one of the Jocks got bored and burnt a copy, the only known copy could be found in the Down-World and is currently in possession of the _Museum of Music."

That was all the book had to say about Lewis or any of the Legends. Sighing, Eve handed it back and muttered a Thank-You. Maybe these Legends could help the five lost band students escape their fate. Somehow, she doubted that, but anything was worth a try.

Tomorrow, she would try to rob a museum. 


	8. Legend Within

****

Legend Within

Disclaimer: Any similarity to the characters in this fic and members of the band that I attend every morning are completely not coincidental. These are real people, so don't steal them. Names have been changed at my enjoyment. The only one who is not real is Shane.

A/N: Sorry about this chapter. This is the worst one, methinks. But don't worry, Chapter Nine returns to the full fun gooeyness of band warfare. Two words: Duct Tape.

****

2:30 a. m., Tuesday

Down-world

Team Green Rescue Team

Eve conscripted Laiva to come along on the museum raid, seeing as how Autumn would stoutly refuse to leave Verran's side. She needed another female so that she could use the "I need to go to the bathroom" excuse. So far, this excuse had a 96.3% rate of accuracy. Surely enough, Shane only blinked stupidly at them as they nearly ran from the room.

"What are we looking for again?" Laiva asked as they jogged down the corridor, perfectly in step.

"I read this book of Shane's earlier," Eve explained, "that was talking about a guy named Lewis. I dunno why, but I think he's our ticket out of here." 

"What if he's as thick as the rest of the people here?" Laiva panted. They had been running for five minutes and had yet to see a sign or anything that had to do with The Museum of Music.

"Doesn't matter. I think he's some sort of Genie, actually. We have to find one of _The Great Music Theory Tomes_ so that we can summon him. Somehow, I don't think those are phonebooks."

Laiva laughed. "Do they even have phones here?" she asked as they jogged around yet another corner. "Look, sunlight!" Up ahead was a set of glass doors—the two him them and blew right through, not even shooting a second glance at the guard. They were startled to find themselves in the middle of a busy, yet eerily quiet, street. "I don't think—" Laiva began, staring wildly around at the silent people moving along.

"Shh!" Eve shushed her. "Just play the part." And she grunted meaningfully, raising both eyebrows as she adopted Shane's swagger. They walked in silence for a while, grunting occasionally for variety.

"We could escape from here, you know," Laiva whispered as they walked along the street, looking at the confusing signs over each doorway. "We could find the portal and get some help."

"Laiva, you can't even navigate in the middle of a field show, what makes you think you're going to be able to find this portal?" Eve pointed out. Laiva reddened, but didn't say anything. "Look! An eighth-note!" She pointed at a sign over a stooped, gray building, forgetting the disguise. "Hurry! We haven't much time."

They made it through the door with very few troubles (Laiva forgot how to work the door for a moment, but Eve did it for her) and into the museum which they discovered was completely empty. "Do these people even know about locks?" Laiva pondered as they looked around the dusty corridors.

"No, and I'm glad they don't. Help me look." Eve was already peering into dirty corners, rifling through the cluttered displays for the tome. Sighing, Laiva decided to check the other half of the museum. _This place really needs a coordinator_, she complained in her head. Laiva was good at complaining—she loved complaining and any whining of any type. The museum was about as cluttered as her own bedroom, if not more so. Displays were stacked untidily throughout the store, looking as though they hadn't been touched. After a few moments of futile searching, she found a lead. A number of suspiciously large lumps were covered by purple cloths. She yanked one off and gaped. "Eve! What kind of instrument do you think Lewis plays?"

"Trumpet, probably, they're such glory grabbers," Eve muttered bitterly from where she was going through a stack of paperwork. "Why—oh."

Laiva was still holding the purple dust-cloth in her hand, having unveiled a statue. The statue was of a very tall young man, clothed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt reading "Ben Folds Five." The statue was holding a trumpet in an offensive position, glaring at the world. "Looks tough," Laiva remarked. The statue next to him was a saxophone-player just shorter than Eve and Laiva. "Hey, she looks like Winnie!" Winnie was a friend of theirs who played the cymbals at football games occasionally.

"Wait a minute! I know her! That's Andrea! (A/N: Yes, another Andrea! We'll call her "Andi") These are the old band seniors from my freshman year!" Eve cried, yanking off another dust-cloth to reveal her old idol, Molly. The next statue was Molly's partner-in-crime, Sarah. Eve let out a small squeak and began yanking off dust-cloths, naming each of the legends in turn. "Steve! Emily! Kat! Alicia! Stu! Evan! Chrissy!"

"Figures from our childhood," Laiva muttered, reaching out to touch Emily's French Horn. "Where's the tome? Maybe we can set them free and they'll help us defeat Travis! I mean, didn't Stu sign that 'I hate Travis' list that Jon was passing around your freshman year?"

"Yeah, and Chrissy did, too," Eve mused. "C'mon! Let's find it!" The two set to the search with renewed vigor, grinning as Eve unearthed a very beat up, very dirty copy of _Great Musical Theory._

"Jackpot," Laiva whispered.

****

8:14 a. m., Tuesday

Teacher's Lounge

Team Green

"Checkmate."

Sebras groaned and refrained from pulling hair out. "I can't believe that we're being foiled by TRAVIS, of all people. Every way we turn, it's a checkmate. This war has been going on for a day and we haven't even scored ANY good hits."

Rand looked up from the mass of wires and hardware he was wading through. "No worries," he assured absently. "Once this thing is up and running, we'll have plenty of back up to get Team Puce with. Brorby, our spy, is working on his end now as we speak." He tapped the computer screen beside him, pointing at a blinking "HotChat" box.

"This had better work," Sebras threatened. "We're staking a VERY nice trumpet on this."

"Trumpets-shmumpets," Amethyst grumbled from the "Guard Corner." She, several of the band seniors, and the color guard team were plotting another large attack on Team Puce, more of a recon mission than anything. "If this works," Elyse had assured, "we should be able to get most of our team back. Then we can capture Team Puce."

"And what if it doesn't work?" Sebras had asked. "Why don't we just go after Team Puce and pick them off one by one?"

"That could work. We'll do that!" Amethyst had announced in that perky way she had. Now they were huddled in concentration, using cheerios they had found to map out the game plan. Sebras was quite sure he was going to develop an ulcer from this entire affair. After all, at the moment, his future was dependant on a bunch of cheerios.

Becky, Dude, and Sebras were all gathered around the chessboard, plotting away on ways to capture Travis. The plan was to hold him for ransom, but it wasn't going well so far. Travis had worked quickly to find all entrances to the band room and block them all with cement. They would have to use the regular entrances without the Jock Tunnels or burrow a new tunnel. And though Vanessa had brought them supplies out the wazoo, it wasn't going to be enough.

"No, I'm telling you!" Kelly's voice rose hotly from the Guard Corner. "We just knock them out. One bop to the head and they're down. No sweat."

"This is manhunt, not KNOCK PEOPLE SENSELESS," Rachel argued.

"So?" Lisa asked.

"Hasn't stopped us before," Trisha added.

"You know," Rand remarked quietly, for Sebras's ears only, "with them on our side, who's worried about getting your trumpet back?" 

****

9:17 a. m., Tuesday

Down World

Autumn, Verran, Solan, and Shane

The fact that two of their teammates were missing wasn't going to stay hidden for long.

Shane was still asleep, sacked out across Eve's couch. Eve and Laiva had somehow disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving three very worried friends behind. "You don't suppose they killed them, do you?" Autumn asked.

"Nah," Solan waved that possibility off. "They probably just got lost."

"While dead asleep?" Verran pointed out.

"Okay, so maybe they did kill them." Solan shrugged and picked at the breakfast they had left behind. It was absolutely exquisite, although he couldn't name anything on the menu. "What strikes me odd about this place is that the people dress nice, live nice, treat their prisoners nice—for the most part—eat nice, but they can barely talk."

Shane grunted.

"Yeah, it's kind of like somebody cursed them to not be able to use the English language or something," Autumn agreed as she dug into her own breakfast. "Maybe they're trying to question Eve and Laiva?"

"Or maybe they're shish-kabobbing them with spears," Verran suggested lightly. "What, dear? Not hungry?" Autumn gave him a dirty look.

"Or maybe Eve and Laiva are standing behind you, wondering why you're talking about us like we're dinner on a stick."

Before they could do so much as turn and gape, Eve and Laiva took up the empty positions at the table and reached for what they hoped was the milk. "How was your night?" Laiva asked, pouring herself a glass.

"I _hate_ pink clarinets," Autumn grumbled. "My couch was _covered_ in them."

"It's okay, mine had trumpets on it," Eve pointed out, laughing at Solan's "Hey!"

"So where were you two?" Verran asked. "Shane's still conked out on your couch, Eve, so I'm sorry if you want to go back to sleep."

Eve pulled a face. "We had a long, seven-hour bathroom trip. Only, we discovered that there aren't any bathrooms in the Museum of Music. I thought the place was _legendary_—"

"Tsk, tsk, Eve," Laiva clucked. "Confusing our dear friends like that! I mean, it would be awful not like your _legendary_ bluntness to—"

"Oh, no, dear friend. I'm quite the _legend_ in the realm of bluntness, but I hold no candle to our good friend Trinity."

"Yeah, I guess she would be the true _legend_."

Their companions goggled at them. Finally, Verran had the sense to ask, "Um? Am I missing something here or do you two just have an obsession with the word 'legend?'"

"Er—both." Eve and Laiva looked at each other. "You explain," Laiva continued. "It was your quest in the first place." 

Eve pulled another face. "All right." She paused, thinking. "Last night, Shane showed me a book. He's got this necklace on that just says 'Lewis,' and I was kind of curious about it. Then it turned out that Lewis saved the band or something during the Great Jock War in '86. So I figured, if he can save the band, why can't he save us? I thought he was a genie of some sort—and he could be summoned with this one book." She reached into her bag and plopped a very dusty volume on the table next to her plate. "Laiva and I went and robbed a museum. We're wanted criminals."

"You bad, bad people," Autumn admonished.

Laiva rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Save it for the press. There can be a public hanging later if you want."

"So are we going to summon Lewis?" Verran asked eagerly, willing to believe anything was possible. His face fell when Eve shook her head.

"We already did."

And like any good cliché in a novel, the door chose that moment to slam open with a great BANG! A tall figure stood silhouetted in the fake movie smoke billowing into the room. The five eating breakfast coughed and waved it away. "Lewis," Eve coughed. "We're glad you could join us."

Gradually, the smoke cleared and they could see Lewis and the Legends clearly. Andi and Stu stood on either side of him, looking vengeful at something. The Legends all filed into the room, standing around a still-sleeping Shane on the couch. "_Lewis?_" Verran demanded. "How'd—how did you get here? You graduated!"

"The Legends were set to rule the Down-World," Lewis explained, his arms and legs creaking as he moved forward. "But the High Council ousted us. Turned us into statues."

"Ouch, bet that hurt," Verran remarked sympathetically.

"No, really, it didn't," Andi commented. "Just waking up did."

"That's cos Laiva knocked you over while she was trying to read the tome," Eve explained. She gave a pointed look in Laiva's direction and the French Horn-Player reddened. Andi nodded solemnly and magicked a chair from somewhere. She balanced an incredibly shiny saxophone on her knees as she sat down.

"So what's going on? Why'd you guys decide to pull us back from our statue-states?" Chrissy, another legend, asked curiously. "And how come you all can talk? The High Council restricted speech in the Down World."

"Well, we're not exactly from the Down-World," Verran explained. "We were captured because we fell into one of their tunnels. Is that what happened to all of you all?" He looked around expectantly, eyes alighting on Stu as he talked.

"No, we came from the Down-World," Chrissy said, looking confused. "I think you've gotten us confused with our Up-World counterparts. Lewis, what are you doing?" Lewis was standing over Shane's couch, looking down at the guard with a confused expression. "Is that Shane? Oh, my word, what have they done to him?" 

"I'm not sure," Lewis speculated. "I think they took away his clarinet. It _changed_ him." He touched the guard's shoulder lightly and Shane bolted awake, shouting incomprehensibly. "Morning," Lewis told him. "Where's your clarinet?"

Shane babbled just as incomprehensibly, but Lewis seemed to understand. After a moment, he said, "Guys," meaning the legends, "there's a lot of trouble. The High Council's been taking this place by force. It's going to take a lot of manpower to stop it."

"High Council?" Laiva interrupted, confused.

"Yes. The High Council—a series of corrupted people who were destined to take over the Down-World. Of course, the legends were formed to stop them, but they backstabbed the legends and took the world by force," Emily recited. Laiva, who had studied under Emily's Up-World replacement as a sophomore, gasped. "Sorry, memorized that from a text book," Emily apologized.

"So the High Council is very bad, then?" Solan summarized.

"Incredibly. I told Leader not to trust Travis like that—" Lewis began, but was cut off by five gasps.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Laiva blinked at him. "You just said Travis! Travis is here?"

"Yeah. He's the leader of the High Council," Chrissy said slowly, unsure of what Laiva was getting at.

"How can he be fighting Team Puce and ruling the Down-World at the same time?" Autumn wondered.

Andi clicked her tongue at them. "Haven't you lot learned _anything_ yet? There are two Travises—one for the Down-World and one for the Up-World."

Her statement was met by a long pause. "First of all," Verran said, "don't _ever_ say two and Travis consecutively in the same sentence—there are only so many heart attacks I can take. Second of all, who let Travis be in charge?"

"Leader O'Malley," Lewis said somberly. He checked his watch, which read "BFF," and sighed. "Guess we'd better get started on saving the day." He started to leave.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Eve said, drawing the attention of everybody in the room. "Can't you help us get back to the Up-World?" she whined to Sarah and Molly. The two legends considered this for a long moment.

"And maybe some weapons would be nice," Solan added quickly. "Travis is really kicking us around up there. The honor of the band is at stake."

He had said something important. Every legend gasped and looked at the others wildly. "Surely we must help!" Alicia piped up. "If the honor of the band is at stake, we need to save the day!" She looked ready to don a cape and hop over the nearest skyscraper.

"Here's what we'll do," Lewis said, shaking his hands as he thought in a very _Gone in Sixty Seconds_ way. "We'll let you have Shane."

The five Up-Worlders glanced dubiously at Shane, who was still babbling on with incoherent words. "Oh, right," Andi said, blushing. She glanced over all of the legends and sighed. "No clarinets? How did we forget a clarinet legend? Methinks the author has something against clarinets."

**I have NOTHING against clarinets. It was a coincidence.**

"So that's why you have an 'Anti-Clarinet' poster over your bed?" Andi accused.

**How do you know what I have under my bed? You're just a character! Stick to your own story!**

"Look," Sarah, another legend, interrupted. "I've played clarinet during Marching Season. I'll give him one." Ignoring the bassoon strapped to her back, she conjured up a shiny black clarinet and tossed that to Shane. It bounced off his head, making him blink, and into his hands. After a moment, he smiled widely.

"Thanks, Sarah!" Shane grinned jubilantly and holstered the clarinet. "Lewis, do you think I should take them to storage and get some ammunition? I had one of my men check on the war and it doesn't look like it's doing too well for Team Green."

Lewis nodded sagely. "And hurry."

Eve followed the rest out, looking like her latest dream had come true. "This guy could be promising," she murmured to Laiva, who only smiled and laughed.


	9. The Springboard Cow

The Springboard Cow  
  
4:53 p. m., Tuesday  
  
Adobe's Classroom  
  
Team Green  
  
The remainder of Team Green stood in the area of the back lab tables and blinked hopelessly at each other. Several of the guard members clutched rifles and two stripped flagpoles each. Amethyst had two small flags strapped across her back, giving her the appearance of a rather delicate butterfly. Of course, the peeved look on her face, which still carried a slight bruise, did not coincide well with the dainty look the gauzy pink flags gave her. The trumpet players, of which there were three, were all holding stripped down poles. The rest of the members carried these, too, with the flags still attached (Elyse blatantly refused to trust trumpet players with her precious flags).  
  
Rand took it upon himself to make the pep talk. "This is it," he said, trying to look valiant. "The big—"  
  
"You say 'Big Kahuna' and I will beat you with a flagpole, I don't care who you are," Meg threatened.  
  
Rand shot her a disgruntled look. "I was going to say 'The Big Fight.' I didn't like our band camp coordinator any more than you did."  
  
"I still win the 'I hate Mr. Boggart' contest," Meg argued. "You're not a drum major. You didn't have to hear him call himself 'the big Kahuna' as much as I did." Still, she lowered the flagpole and subsided, letting Rand finish his pep talk.  
  
"I know the stakes are high against us," he said boldly. "We're one tenth the size of Team Puce. I know they've been capturing us left and right—and that there's a two-thousand dollar trumpet at stake—"  
  
"Congratulations, I think this is the worst pep talk I have ever heard," Rachel, still a bit dizzy from the incident with the cooler and the stairs, broke in. "Why don't you try cheering us up instead?"  
  
"All I am trying to say," Rand stressed, "is that I have utter faith in every single one of you, and knowing that, you can fight to the death with a smile on your face."  
  
Trisha groaned. "Shoot me."  
  
"Please," Lisa added.  
  
Rand then wisely decided to let somebody else make the pep talk. Lisa took the initiative and leaped onto the table, hoisting her shiny blue rifle over her head. "Let's do it!" she shouted.  
  
"I like that one much better," a voice chirped from the doorway. Solan leaned languidly against the doorframe, smiling confidently and still dressed in his Down-World clothing. He had lost the suit-jacket somewhere, but in place of that were about five trumpets, all strapped to him. "A little help from our Down-World friends," he explained, pulling a trumpet off and tossing it to Sebras. "Catch." Sebras caught the trumpet and immediately felt warmth seep through his entire form. Suddenly, things were starting to look up.  
  
"Yeah, but trumpets aren't all they gave us," another voice added. "Yo, Meg, Triphos!" Verran appeared in the doorway, flinging enchanted drumsticks at his cohorts in the percussion section. To top it all off, he threw large cymbals at the two of them, meant to be used as shields. "We've got a plethora of weapons here."  
  
Autumn and Eve entered, both grinning broadly as they handed out instruments to shocked Team Green members. Eve carried sharp, deadly looking saxophones; Autumn passed out wicked-looking clarinets and flutes. Laiva appeared last, grinning. "Gabi!" she cried, shot-putting a mellophone across the room. This was quickly followed by a French horn. Rachel received both as well, grinning. The French horn split into two parts that could be flung like a frisbee and cause a lot of damage. Soon, the only one without a weapon was Becky.  
  
Shane entered without a word and passed Becky a silver violin. "Eve's new guy," Laiva explained quickly as Shane moved back behind Eve. She really didn't want to explain his presence yet—there was too much to do. "He's kind of quiet."  
  
"Where did you find these?" Gabi asked, admiring her new weapons. "Sharp edges and everything." She whistled her approval.  
  
"Shane's a millionaire. Let's leave it at that for now and go fight," Eve said hastily. She raised her bassoon, pumping her arm in preparation. "Sebras, head the way. Pure, raw, armed battle. Go big or go home, right?"  
  
"No, wait, I've got a better idea," Sebras said. "Elyse, can you give our arrivals some weapons?"  
  
The arrivals were given sabres as they passed Elyse, although Amethyst winced while handing one to Laiva. "I've got a very bad feeling about this," she intoned to one of her freshmen.  
  
6:04 p. m., Tuesday  
  
1 Adobe's Classroom  
  
Team Green  
  
"What we need to do first is 'smoke them out' of the band room," Sebras explained when they met again to discuss plans for the next day. "That would leave Elyse, Amethyst, and the guard freshmen to go in and grab our people that got captured." Sebras glanced at Amethyst, who was dictating for Elyse since the captain was gone retrieving a stash of flags that the freshmen had hidden in the Freshman Hideaways, and received a nod.  
  
"How do we plan on smoking them out?" Laiva asked. "Cigarettes disgust me."  
  
"We're not going to surround the band room with cigarettes, obviously. I mean, not very many, if any at all, of us smoke," Rand commented. "Sebras didn't mean it literally, I hope."  
  
"Actually, I did." Sebras held up a small vial of powder. "Miss Adobe mentioned Chemical X in class quite a while ago."  
  
"So we're making Powerpuff Girls?" Amethyst asked in confusion.  
  
"No, we're making explosives. See, Chemical X is popular for producing small, controlled explosions when mixed with another substance," Sebras explained.  
  
"Oh, controlled explosions?" Autumn muttered sarcastically.  
  
"Yeah, controlled explosions," Sebras said, shooting her a strange look. "It has an approximate ten-second waiting period between adding the powders together and exploding. Laiva, if you'll fold some origami bunnies while we talk, that would be great. We'll rig those so that all we have to do is pull a cord and the bomb goes off."  
  
"Paper bunny bombs," Laiva mused. "Why does my lack of confidence in this newest hair-brained scheme of yours not surprise me?" Still, she started folding up squares of paper stolen from Adobe's printer.  
  
"Once we've got them to leave the band room, how do we round them up?" somebody wondered.  
  
"That's up to Gabi to do. Pick a few people and come up with a roundup plan," Sebras told the solemn-faced junior. Gabi was the best to gather hostages—she was strong, determined, and wouldn't be swayed easily with a goal in mind. "Use lots of rope and such," he suggested, continuing. He consulted his clipboard for a moment. "You have a big Pillsbury doughboy, several posters, and paper bags at your disposal. Use them wisely. I'd suggest that you use Meg's freshman—Krista—she has the skeleton key." Krista nodded.  
  
"A Pillsbury doughboy?" Meg asked. "Seriously?"  
  
"It's in the next classroom over. About as tall as Amethyst, maybe a little taller," Rand told her. Amethyst, who was taller than the Styrofoam Pillsbury Doughboy, stuck her tongue out and glared.  
  
Elyse walked in, looking dusty but happy. Rachel and Gina trailed after her, each carrying a bundle of flags. They wordlessly started depositing the ammunition until each member was stocked to the teeth with weapons. "Good news," Elyse chirped. "I've mapped out most of the tunnels while these two collected flags." She waved a very dusty paper at them. "There are these great, big empty rooms all over the place—"  
  
"Great!" Rand interrupted. "We'll use those to store the hostages in."  
  
"And various freshmen that get annoying," Lisa grumbled.  
  
"Anyway, Gabi and her troops will manage to get the captives into the holding rooms in the tunnels, then," Sebras mused. "First, though, we need to make sure they can't get anywhere."  
  
"So block the hallways?" Meg asked.  
  
"How?" Triphos finished.  
  
"Well, we'll flood the downstairs red hallway. We hope to putty the blue hallway doors shut so that the only way they can run is outside—where Gabi will have sentries to bag them," Sebras explained.  
  
"And the downstairs green hallway?" one of Corey's freshmen piped in. "What about that?"  
  
"You leave that to Sebras, Solan and I," Rand said, grinning. He held up a mass of wire. "Needless to say, we'll make the journey…difficult. It won't hurt for too long."  
  
"You're going to shock them?" Laiva asked, goggling at the mass of wire. "Is that all right with school policy?"  
  
"It's perfectly fine." Rand shrugged. "Just a bit of jolt and they'll fall asleep. They'll wake up hostages, no big deal." Rand shrugged again, as though shocking people was perfectly acceptable.  
  
"Your morals, or lack of, shock me," Vanessa punned dryly. "So we're going to shock, smoke, putty, and flood them out. Wow, we are strange people." They all shared a mutual shrug.  
  
"So we just get as many of them as we can?" Rachel asked. "That's it?"  
  
"Basically," Laiva told her.  
  
"Get Travis. That's all that matters. The wiry little rodent has evaded us too long," Sebras swore, driving his fist into his palm.  
  
"Er, just curious, what exactly are we doing?" the other of Amethyst's freshmen asked.  
  
"Tomorrow, we fight. To the death."  
  
7:29 p. m., Tuesday  
  
Outside Near the Red Hallway  
  
Vanessa, Meg, and Becky  
  
Vanessa led her small crew outside, blinking in the dusky evening light. It had been two days since they had last seen sunlight, she remembered. Vaguely, she wondered if the rest of the town had noticed the disappearance of the high school band yet. No matter, really. She looked around. "If we're lucky," she told Meg and Becky, "Occupations of America left the fire hose out."  
  
"How exactly are we going to pump enough water into the red hallway, though?" Becky asked. Vanessa unlocked the shed and they entered, wrinkling their noses at the musty darkness.  
  
"Our school has one of those newfangled things that does the pumping for us," Vanessa explained. "Occupations of America appealed to the jocks to go to the Board of Education for more money. Needless to say, they got lots of it."  
  
"So we have holes and smelly, dirty uniforms because the jocks hate us?" Becky continued, her brow furrowing.  
  
"Pretty much." Meg was now hauling the large, tan hose out of the shed. "Of course, there's also the 'band factor' that comes into play. I don't know if this applies exclusively to our school or schools around the world, but the law states that all that's band and easy will be difficult." She shrugged and gestured for Becky to help her connect the hose to the pump.  
  
"Hope they don't get mad at us for this," Vanessa remarked absently, switching the pump to 'flood.' She moved too early, however, and the hose went psycho. Becky and Meg wrestled with the flailing hose, glaring in concentration. "Oh, sorry." She switched the pump off and the two battling the hose stood up, panting and drenched.  
  
"At least wait until we get the hose secure," Meg snapped. They had left the window to the upstairs red hallway open. Now Becky set up a ladder and Meg climbed up, carrying the hose that Becky threaded to her. The water would trickle down the stairs and into the hallway, flooding it by eight o'clock the next morning. Meg, Vanessa, and Becky would all have to take the long way back to Headquarters, but that didn't matter much. Meg struggled with the duct tape. "Extra durable," she grunted, finally strapping the hose to the sill. Another strip lay across the nozzle for good security.  
  
"Okay!" Becky called to Vanessa.  
  
"Flood her!" Meg added. Vanessa nodded and once again switched the pump to 'flood.' Quickly, they started hurrying around the school to the green hallway entrance, listening to the music of the water pumping into the downstairs red hallway.  
  
"What about the lockers?" Becky asked as Vanessa joined them.  
  
"Waterproof. We puttied every classroom door shut for good measure," Meg explained. "C'mon, let's get back to the team."  
  
8:14 p. m., Tuesday  
  
Downstairs Green Hallway  
  
Sebras, Solan, and Rand  
  
Rand, Sebras, and Solan were all working on the shock device. Well, Rand was working on the shock device, Sebras and Solan were creating an obstacle course for the Team Puce members to crawl through. From the gym, they had procured several basketballs, baseballs, and bouncy balls. Bright, disorienting posters, stolen from a plethora of classrooms, coated every available surface and dangled at random from the ceiling. Bessie the cow statue (taken from the Future Farmers of America Classroom) stood in front of a garish couch (taken from the backstage area), both blocking the hallway. The grand finale, or masterpiece, was a pile of boxes stacked together at the end of the hallway. Sebras and Solan had deliberately left a path off to the side, obviously the way Team Puce members would go. Rand was rigging the shock device to shock anybody who took the obvious route.  
  
Of course, the hallway was also stocked with smaller items. Several objects lay around—an alien head taken from a math classroom, a giant stuffed Taz doll from the physics classroom, potted plants from many classrooms, stands, instrument cases, backpacks, Sprout the Styrofoam figure, and a pink plastic Barbie car complete with working headlights. Sebras and Solan were rather proud of their ingenuity.  
  
"Are you almost done?" Solan asked Rand after they had rigged the a giant disco ball light set to the ceiling and scattered newspapers everywhere. To Sebras, he asked, "Should we add more stuff?"  
  
"No, because our members have to get through here, too," Sebras said, frowning. "I still think our couch/cow combo is a bit much."  
  
"No, we'll just have to be Olympian, like the gymnasts." And Solan sprinted directly at the cow, planting both hands on the back and using his momentum to vault over. One foot hit the couch and he sprang fourteen feet further using only his momentum. He rolled to a stop, narrowly avoiding crashing into the lockers. "Aren't physics great?"  
  
"Olympian?" Rand asked, not looking up from the device he was fiddling with.  
  
"Yeah. Like gymnastics and springboard!" Solan grinned. "The Springboard Cow!"  
  
"Why," said a new voice behind them, "am I scared? And do I have a reason to be?" Laiva smiled and hugged Sebras. "I knew you guys were creating an obstacle course, but this is a bit ridiculous."  
  
"Oh, it's not. There's an easy way through it," Rand assured.  
  
"What? Run like mad and hope for the best?" Amethyst asked. "We brought the rest of the runners so you could show us how to get through here." She gestured at the group clustered about, most still clutching a plethora of weapons, albeit with some difficulty.  
  
Solan nodded. "Well, see, there's a really easy trick to getting through here." He paused, looking around. "Don't go the obvious way. It's rather simple—and obvious." He grinned and turned. "Like this!" He turned and sprinted, legs churning over the newspapers, dodging the basketballs. "And the cow's real fun," he called over his shoulder.  
  
"Yeah, don't try to go around the cow," Sebras warned as they watched Solan vault. "We set up laundry detergent that way and you'll trigger the cow to bash you into the lockers. It's rather painful." Solan had reached the boxes by now. The group watched in amazed silence as he hoisted his entire weight onto a rope and flung himself through a small pathway at the top of the boxes. "There's padding on the other side," Sebras explained hastily.  
  
"Why didn't he just take the way on the ground?" Rachel asked dubiously.  
  
In response, Rand held up a potato. "A simple potato, probably grown in Idaho," he explained, waving it for the group to see. "Watch what happens." He threw it through the tunnel on the ground and a flash of blue light nearly blinded them. "Anybody hungry?" He held up a cooked potato and swore as it burnt his fingers.  
  
"It won't do that to humans, will it?" Eve asked nervously.  
  
"Nope." Rand smiled. "It won't hurt permanently. It's just like taking a nap…where you wake up as a hostage."  
  
"That's very reassuring, Rand," Amethyst said, rolling her eyes.  
  
Solan reappeared, grinning. "Who wants to go next?"  
  
9:23 p. m., Tuesday  
  
Adobe's Classroom  
  
Team Green  
  
"The attack begins promptly at eight o'clock." Becky had been made the official tactician since Sebras had plotted out most of the large parts of the plan. "Elyse, have you assembled your team yet?"  
  
Elyse nodded. "I've got all of the guard freshmen and Amethyst. It's a typical mission—get the captives out and return them safely to base in case they're needed to run. Or have them report to Gabi."  
  
"Hopefully Travis hasn't done anything to them," Dude, one of the saxophone players, grumbled.  
  
"He won't have. Travis may be annoying, but he's not unnecessarily cruel." Becky turned to Gabi. "Who is your team? Who's on it, I mean? I need a head count." Gabi silently pointed at each of her team members in turn. "Could all of you stand up for just a second so I can get names down?" Becky asked, trying to scribble frantically.  
  
Only five people out of Gabi's six stood up. She glanced at the sixth member. "Andrea?"  
  
The freshman blinked at her. "Yes?"  
  
"You're part of the running team. Why aren't you standing?"  
  
Andrea grinned. "I'm going in the kayak," she announced. Everybody blinked in shock. "I figure, the author has the audacity to stuff me in a cooler, I can have the cool job."  
  
"She shoved me in a cooler AND knocked me down the stairs," Rachel pointed out.  
  
"Yeah, but you get to shock people," Andrea told her. "That's a fun job, too. Turning people into baked potatoes definitely constitutes as fun."  
  
"She can go in the kayak, I don't mind," Laiva offered. "It's not that big of a deal. In fact, I'll swim down the red hallway with Meg so that we can pull her out and guide the kayak." She shrugged and tapped both hands on the desk, bored.  
  
"I still need a runner." Gabi frowned. "She's one of the primes to lead Travis down the green hallway."  
  
"I can still run," Andrea told her. "All I have to do is get out of the kayak and sprint. They'll be plenty annoyed when I come in on the kayak, so wouldn't they chase me?"  
  
Becky shrugged and glanced at Gabi. "Will that work?"  
  
"That'll work," Gabi said after moment.  
  
"Good. We all know our assignments, then?" She received nods. "Rand, how high is the water level?"  
  
"It should be up by eight o'clock tomorrow, at this rate," Rand informed her.  
  
"Good. Get some sleep. We attack at eight."  
  
7:45 a. m., Wednesday  
  
Adobe's Classroom  
  
Sebras, Laiva, Rand, Meg, and Andrea  
  
"Is the level almost ready?" Sebras asked Rand as Meg returned from getting the five of them breakfast. Gabi's troop and Elyse's ranks had already set out, so it was only the group left. Becky was at the second base, putting on a cover of being the leader. If Travis's men got the idea to run there, she would be taken captive and be instrumental in getting more captives out. It had been her own idea.  
  
Rand tapped in a series of commands on the keyboard. Laiva watched over his shoulder, curious, as images flashed by. The screen froze on a bird's eye view of the red hallway, now gushing with water. Rand had highlighted the line they desired the water to be up to by eight o'clock in red. Laiva saw that they were a couple of inches short. "Very close," Rand reported.  
  
"Is the kayak ready yet?" Sebras asked, snatching a glazed donut from the box Meg held.  
  
"Almost. We fixed up the hole, but we still have yet to mount the battering ram," Meg told him. "In fact, I've brought the duct tape to do that." Laiva, chewing on an éclair, immediately set to doing that.  
  
"Visuals on Elyse's team, Rand," Sebras ordered, satisfied.  
  
Rand called up the images of a small quartet moving silently about the corridors. "They haven't given the signal yet," Rand informed him. "Oh, no, wait, I see it." He had pulled up a picture of the chorus room, where a hand poked up and place a flag near the piano. "Five minutes."  
  
"Right." Laiva dragged the Jolly Green Giant across the room and set him flat on his belly. Working with Meg now, she lugged the kayak over and placed that on top of him. "One—two—flip!" They flipped both over so that the kayak was bottom-up on the bottom and the Jolly Green Giant was staring at the ceiling. Quickly, Meg applied duct tape. "Super-durable," Laiva observed appreciatively. "Every good Bandie needs some of that."  
  
"Yeah. We fixed up Brorby's old tuba with this last year and went sledding," Meg said, grinning. She finished duct-taping the Jolly Green Giant to the kayak. "It's great stuff."  
  
"Almost as good as Ski," Andrea added.  
  
"Three minutes," Rand reported.  
  
Sebras listened to his walkie-talkie for a long moment. "Gabi's team is in place. You three had better get in position, and wait for the signal!" Nodding, Meg and Laiva hauled the kayak over their heads and, with Andrea supporting the middle, headed out.  
  
"Two minutes," Rand reported some seconds later.  
  
Sebras flicked on his walkie-talkie. "Becky, Gabi, Elyse. Two minutes."  
  
"Affirmative," was the reply from three people.  
  
Two minutes dwindled down to one minute and then… "Showtime," Sebras whispered into the walkie-talkie. 


	10. In Which There is a Kayak and a few Name...

A/N: Sorry everybody! I took a long time to get this out, I know. I've been plugging in on "Deeper Than Blood." The next chapter after this is the final confrontation—most of which I have written already. So I shouldn't take toooo long. Hopefully.

Disclaimer: Any characters that bear similarity to those I talk to everyday are completely not coincidental.

****

In Which There is a Kayak and a few Nameless Freshmen

Chapter Ten

7:59 a. m., Wednesday

Ventilation about Band Room

Team Green

"How much time left?" Verran demanded of their Team Leader, Becky. The sophomore (Becky) had at first been intimidated by the fact that she was in charge of several ingenious juniors, but now she swallowed and decided to take this by the throat.

"One minute," she answered, loading yet another Paper Bunny Bomb onto her violin bow.

Autumn, Verran, and Dude, another sophomore, had discovered that they could make quite an adequate catapult using duct tape, a cymbal, drumsticks, a clarinet, two tennis balls, and an alto saxophone. Now Autumn and Dude were taking turns catapulting unsuspecting freshmen across the room. Usually, to Autumn's sadistic satisfaction, they let out a small cry before landing with a sickening squeak of used band sneakers.

Verran now shoved the latest unsuspecting freshman (who happened to be wearing a red shirt) off of the catapult and started loading the special Paper Bunny Bombs on. On impact, the two powders inside the paper vessels would mix and ten seconds later…

"BOOM!" illustrated one particularly "easily-amused" freshman.

The walkie-talkie in Becky's hand crackled to life. "Showtime," Sebras announced, sounding quite terrified. Verran did not even think how worried his twin must be as he jumped on the cymbal, sending the Paper Bunny Bombs to ricochet against the wall of the ventilation shaft before dropping right on the heads of an unaware Team Puce. The thought of dropping capsules of stinky smoke was enough to send Autumn into wild cackles of glee.

"Go!" Becky commanded, and the first load was off. "Wait…wait…NOW!"

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.

It was roughly the equivalent of how knocking over a line of 19 trumpets would sound, minus the loud complaining from Travis, Mike, and Alex.

Meanwhile, Dude and three of the nameless freshmen were pelting the confused Team Puce members with Paper Bunny Bombs.

It didn't take long for the Team Puce members to figure out what to do. When faced with giant volumes of disgusting smoke versus the clean, filtered air of a band hallway, even Puce members knew what to pick. Travis jumped in their way, bellowing, "NO! They're trying to smoke us out—don't give in!"

"Dude," one of the sophomores snapped. "Being captured is better than dealing with that smoke." Travis was quickly knocked out of the way.

Verran, Autumn, Becky, and Dude all continued to throw Paper Bunny Bombs, snickering with near bliss as they watched Travis stand up. But then he spotted them and tables turned. "Mike! Alex!" he shouted to his two henchmen. "Up there!" No other words were needed—each of the minions grabbed one of Travis's arms and flung him straight into the ventilation shaft. He landed, flattening some poor nameless freshman, and brandished his dinged up trumpet at them.

"RUN!" Becky shouted.

Verran provided a distraction by snatching up his cymbal and flinging it at Travis's head. Travis ducked and sprinted after the retreating group.

"BECKY!" Sebras shouted over the walkie-talkie. "What's going on in there? The cameras aren't picking up anything because of the smoke!"

Becky, still running, reported, "Travis found our hide-out, sir, and is attempting to chase us down."

There was a pause on Sebras's end of the line. "Is he alone?"

"Yeah!" Autumn yelled.

Another pause, this time longer as the group split up into two at a fork—the freshmen to the left, everybody else to the right. "Are there NOT four of you that are larger, stronger, and smarter than Travis?" Sebras finally demanded. "Turn back and chase HIM down! Squish the rat! Now!"

"Oh…yeah…" Becky said sheepishly. Smoke collected as four sets of sneakers ground to a halt and turned the other direction. Travis barely had time to turn before they were on him. Suddenly, the tables were turned once again. "AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!" Travis screamed as he discovered two angry juniors and two angry sophomores on his tail.

****

8:08 a. m., Wednesday

Tunnels

Team Green

Elyse's group was hopelessly lost.

"This is NOT cool," Rachel reported, having just peeked out of the hatch Elyse had opened. "We're in the History wing."

"How can we be in the History Wing?" Trisha demanded. "We just left the Choir Room!"

"Which, I might point out, is right next to the Band Room! There's a practice room connecting them—how'd we miss that?" Lisa continued for her.

Elyse blushed. "Misread the symbols. Let's go back the other way."

****

8:10 a. m., Wednesday

Tunnels 

Team Green

"Nope, still History wing," Gina reported.

Everybody groaned.

****

8:12 a. m., Wednesday

Red Hallway

Team Green

"This water is COLD," Meg complained as she stripped out of layers of band shirts to reveal a black tank top. Laiva was hurriedly pulling off her sneakers, trying to keep the kayak on the stairs with one hand. Andrea, sitting in the kayak, held onto a pole, but the current was almost too strong for the freshman. "We have to swim in this thing?"

"And make sure that Andrea doesn't get a concussion," Laiva pointed out. "The water level is almost too high. If she sits up too straight, then she knocks her head on the ceiling. That leaves one of us to keep hold of the kayak and one of us to keep her on the surface."

Sebras appeared at the top of the stairs. Miss Adobe's classroom was the one right next to the stairs, so he kept appearing to give reports. "You'll be needing to set off in about two minutes," he reported. "Rand's got the door-opening mechanism working."

"Glad to see something going according to schedule," Andrea muttered. "Any news on the guard?"

"They're hopelessly lost, probably," Laiva predicted. "Elyse probably misread the symbols in her excitement."

"I'd better get to the classroom and check on that, then," Sebras decided. He disappeared, leaving the three with the kayak to their own devices. Meg, the ever-vigilant drum major, counted out 120 beats at a tempo of 60 beats.

"Time to go," she announced, slipping into the water. Laiva slipped in on the other side, trying to ignore the fact that she was numbing quickly. "Three…two…one…"

"YEEE-HAAAAAAAW!" Laiva shouted as the doors on the other end of the hallway open and the current tugged at the kayak…

****

8:13 a. m., Wednesday

Tunnels

Team Green

"Good news," Rachel told everybody. "We're in the English Wing now!"

"Which is right next to the History Wing."

Everybody groaned.

****

8:14 a. m., Wednesday

Right Outside Red Hallway (Where the Flood Is)

Team Puce

Bob Smith was a smart guy. He was also a percussionist, which meant that he was half-deaf and had very little rhythm, but he was still smart. And even though he had "Percussionist's Back" and hearing problems, he could definitely hear the sound of water.

"RUN!" somebody to his right shouted, and suddenly Bob was being pulled out of the way as water flushed over Team Puce in a tidal wave. He could hear somebody shout "YEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAW!"

And then there was darkness.

****

8:14 a. m., Wednesday

Red Hallway

Team Green

The kayak sped like a percussionist towards food.

Meg and Laiva, riding surfboard-style beside it, were focusing on keeping Andrea conscious. The water rushed around them, occasionally banging them rather painfully into lockers and wall partitions. Laiva's ears were ringing by the time that they burst out in to the spot where all of the hallways and the main staircase met. Team Puce members screamed as the kayak rushed over them.

And as quickly as it had began, Meg and Laiva were hauling Andrea out of the kayak and slipping over the bodies of the unfortunate Team Puce members, racing down the obstacle course in the Green Hallway. "Hey!" cried Bob Smith, a rather stupid percussionist. He gave pursuit, leading several of his group down a very wet trail. They slipped and slid, but still managed to keep on the tail of the three Team Green members.

Meg went first, vaulting over the cow and landing on the couch. Andrea went next, using Meg's arm as support as she scurried off of the couch. Laiva's hand slipped on the cow, but her momentum carried her to a rather painful landing on the couch. "Owwww," she complained even as Andrea and Meg were tugging on her arms, inspiring her to MOVE! Still with their crowd of followers, the three dodged backpacks, stands, sports equipment, pinatas, textbooks, O'Malley's cardboard cut-out, and a very annoyed squid. Finally, they were at the pile of boxes, hauling their way through the top while a cluster of Team Puce ran right into the trap Rand had set up. Quickly, people waiting for the runners hauled the unconscious Pucers into the cage Gabi had created for them.

"Success!" cried Meg, Andrea, and Laiva as they slapped a three-way high-five.

"I don't think so. We've only got about forty more members to go," Solan told them from where he was dispatching the next group of runners.

"I know, but have you SEEN the Red Hallway? That's going to go down in the Band Book of World Records," Meg gushed. She slapped a high-five to Gabi and moved to sit down.

****

8:17 a. m., Wednesday

Tunnels

Team Green

"Wait…yes…I think…YES! I have found the band room!" Elyse chirped, doing a victory dance with an imaginary rifle. "Is everybody loaded and ready to go?" Each member nodded affirmation and held out a strange variety of instruments and colorguard rifles/flags/sabres. "Let's go!"

"I think," Corey commented to Gina and Rachel, "that's the first time I've gotten lost on the way to the band room before."

"You must have never been a freshman, then," Rachel told her.

****

8:18 a. m., Wednesday

Ventilation Shaft

Team Green

"Blast it, doesn't this bugger EVER DIE?" Verran swore as the four now very sweaty Team Green members continued to chase Travis down. They had been going at full speed down the ventilation shafts for some time now, and knocking his head on the ceiling was just starting to get to Verran.

"He's like a cockroach or something. They can live for a week without their heads," Becky gasped, struggling to keep up now. "He's gotta fall through a hole sometime."

"For the Down-World's sake, I hope he doesn't!" Autumn said fervently. "They can only handle one Travis, even IF Lewis is there!"

Travis took another sharp turn up ahead, nearly crashing into the wall as he did so.

Dude was imagining all of the things he planned to do to the annoying Team Puce leader once they caught him. Roasting him on a spit seemed to be the _nicest _thing on Dude's list.

Up ahead, Autumn swore that she could see light. Like there was a window or something…in the ventilation shaft? Belatedly, Autumn realized that there really _was_ a window and that Travis was headed to crash straight through it. "STOP!" she shouted, but he didn't listen. The sound of breaking glass ensued and then Travis was gone, outside and free.

"That…" Verran broke off into several curse words, the nicest being 'dog-eared jerk.'

"Let's just get back to the base. As long as Travis is free, we have planning to do," Becky decided, leaning against the wall to catch her breath. "Dude, can you plot his course?"

"Nah, I didn't get a good enough tracker on him," Dude sighed, pulling out a large control box. "He wasn't holding still long enough. Even Star Wars technology isn't that good." He flicked a couple of switches and watched the images on the screen for a long moment. "My camera-spy is picking up a disturbing amount of movement in the Green Hallway. Team Puce people running to their fates as baked potatoes, I suppose?"

"Let's hope so. I'm hungry," Verran commented. "We'd better get back before Travis can run very far."

"He's a trumpet. Trumpets hit sunlight and they complain. He won't get too far." Still, Autumn was already heading back to the base.

****

8:24 a. m., Wednesday

Miss Adobe's Room

Team Green

Elyse's and Becky's teams arrived back at the same time, several escaped prisoners in tow. Corey was holding a very shell-shocked Krista up, murmuring, "It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. The evil trumpets will go away when you feel better." Nearby, Rachel and Gina were checking over the escaped hostages for any external injuries. The only trouble seemed to be to the fragile psychological conditions.

"They're in shock," Lisa, a Psychology I student, reported needlessly. "They need rest." She and Trisha helped cart the injured hostages into the office, where they could sleep off the hardship. "That task was surprisingly easy."

"The whole _day's _been surprisingly easy," Rand groaned.

"Hey, speak for yourself." Verran, Autumn, Becky, and Dude were still breathing hard from the exertion of chasing Travis down. "You didn't spend twenty minutes hunting down some rat."

"No, we were lost in the History Wing," Rachel supplied helpfully, just as a very drenched trio of Meg, Andrea, and Laiva walked in. "What have y'all been up to?"

"Wreaking havoc, flooding the school. You know, normal stuff," Laiva said as she collapsed into one of the desks in the back row. She didn't bother to notice that it was the very desk she sat in every seventh hour of a normal school day. "What's going on?"

"Gabi and Brorby report that about forty people have managed to escape outside," Rand announced.

"Where Travis is," Verran growled.

A brick chose that moment to sail through the window. It landed on the desk, a white paper fluttering in the breeze. Quickly, Meg, who was nearest, unwrapped it and read, "Come get us, you ninnies."

"Ninnies?" demanded Andrea and Gina at the same time. "What kind of word is that?" Andrea continued.

"Eh." Laiva shrugged. "It's an insult. I say we kill 'im."

"You know what this means, right?" Sebras asked, taking the sheet from Meg. "This means war. Let's go get him. First one to take Travis down gets ten bucks. Let's go get him, like he said."

Somebody, nobody was sure who, laughed evilly as Team Green headed out the door and down the stairs to face their biggest enemy for the last and final time.


	11. My Rather Pathetic Climax and Terrible E...

****

The Rather Pathetic Climax and Terrible Ending

Chapter 11

8:36 a. m., Wednesday

Team Green

Football Field

From the thirty yard-line to the other 30 yard-line, they formed a company front, evenly four steps apart. Many were wet or covered with bits of newspaper and magazine shreds from the Green Hallway. They were all exhausted, tired, sick, and incredibly annoyed.

And they were all armed.

Rand and Brorby, who had finally come out of his position as spy for Team Green, paced along the company front, occasionally tossing nods, jokes, insults, or whatever they felt like it to the people standing there. Like a typical marching band, the company front had their instruments resting in front of them and were talking.

"So when will Team Puce get here, anyway?" Rachel the Guard Girl demanded. The guard formed a wide half-circle around the company front, blunt, heavy swing poles ready and waiting to be used.

"And will they be bringing lattés?" Verran yawned, looking quite tired.

Fortunately for the author, who is getting rather tired of having to keep a nonexistent plot line going, Team Puce appeared over the top of the "home" bleachers, carrying a myriad of weapons. Laiva noticed a couple of the members carrying football and snickered. All of the team wore their leather jackets, but they looked rather tired from running. In four single-file lines, they moved down the bleachers, finally ending up on the track and staring at Team Green.

"So, it comes down to this," Travis said, appearing among the ranks. He was flanked immediately by Mike and Alex, who grinned around at Team Puce and glared at Team Green.

Rand, Sebras, Solan, and Verran all appear among the company front, grouping to form a formidable quartet. "It comes down to this, yes," Rand agreed. Any bystanders would have already cast their lot in with Team Puce, which was easily three times larger than Team Green. "Surrender now, or shall we bring out our secret weapon?"

The secret weapon, which was actually a goat named Fred, bahhhhed.

"No," Sebras said suddenly. "This is between Travis and I. My trumpet. His seat. We fight."

Travis's eyes widened, but he was not going to back down from a challenge. "Right, then. We fight." He snapped his fingers, and spread his arms. Mike and Alex rolled their eyes as they removed the leather jacket from his frame. Underneath the jacket, Travis was wearing a black wife-beater and regular blue jeans. Every girl in sight shuddered, Green or otherwise.

****

Sebras pulled of his own jacket so that he was wearing a They Might Be Giants T-shirt and baggy blue jeans.

"Wait, wait, wait," interrupted Meg. "We need to do this properly." She looked around and clapped her hands. "Band! FIGHT!" This was the unofficial command for the band to group into a circle perfect for an arena. Immediately the band sprang to do just that, Team Puce standing on Travis's half and Team Green on Sebras's half. "Why don't you guys listen to me this well for official commands?" Laiva heard her mutter.

"Beat him down, Sebras!" Verran cheered for his brother.

From somewhere, Meg produced a length of rope. "Hold out your wrists." Sebras and Travis, looking the slightest bit nervous, did so. She tied their left wrists together, smirking. "Okay, now the fight's proper."

The fighters circled each other, kept together only by the length of rope attached to each left wrist. "I'm twice the trumpet player you are, Sebras!" Travis growled. Team Green laughed as though this was the funniest thing they had heard. Gabi had to lean on Laiva if she wanted to stay on her feet. Even Shane, Eve's down-world boyfriend, giggled a bit (it was a manly giggle).

Instead of turning red from embarrassment, Travis seemed to think of this as some sort of praise and dove at Sebras, who dodged and used the rope to fling Travis to the ground. Travis let out an "oof!" Sebras tackled him.

"I don't get it," Autumn commented as the two rolled around, attempting to beat the snot out of each other.

"Get what?" Laiva asked, trying to use telekinesis to bring her some popcorn. Hey, if the first chair trumpet was getting the living daylights beaten out of him, the situation at least merited popcorn.

"That!" and Autumn pointed at the spectacle of the two adolescents fighting on the ground. "Do they think it makes them the dominant male or something? Are we really gorillas? Are girl scout cookies really made of girl scouts?"

"Nah," Eve interrupted, "Travis is more of a chimpanzee."

"Nononono!" Ame said vehemently, stomping over to them from her set of guard chicks. Her twins and Lindsay, a yet to be mentioned guard member, trailed her like a mother duck even though she was the shortest. "I'm telling you: Travis is an orangutan!"

"So…what's Sebras, then?" Gabi demanded.

Everybody shrugged and turned to watch the fight. Sebras had somehow managed to grab a chunk of soap (from where, nobody knew) and was stuffing that into Travis's ear. Travis had managed to procure a bit of lotion and was trying to force that into Sebras's mouth. Alex and Mike were wandering around, taking bets, and Elyse had somehow managed to grab a paddle for a rowboat and was waving that around.

And with a thud, Travis hit the ground. He had an earful of soap and his eyes were closed, but nobody was quite sure how he had been knocked out. Sebras spit out the lotion. "Yuck! I WIN!" Even though he was still tied to Travis, he jumped up and did a victory dance. "I win! I win! I win!"

"Monkey," Autumn, Laiva, Gabi, Eve, Ame, and her ducklings all agreed on one breath.

"Fine....you win," Alex said, untying Travis's wrist from the rope. He glanced at two of the nameless male freshmen and they scurried off. Team Green licked their wounds while they waited for the freshmen to return. Before long, they did, their breath rising in explosions of steam as they carried a silver trumpet on a green cushion. "Could I get a senior to do the honors?"

And so one of the Puce seniors stepped forward, plucked the trumpet off of the cushion, and handed it unceremoniously to Sebras, who still had the other end of the rope dangling from his wrist. Raising the trumpet to the bright sunlight, Sebras let out a triumphant yell.

With hands shaking, he raised the trumpet to his lips and played.

A cold, clean note spread across the band valley, washing the trees with new light. In instants, Team Green stood in respectable ranks, decked in fancy silver and green uniforms. Black berets touched the tops of their heads, firmly pressed and making Team Green look incredibly formidable. Team Puce, dressed in similar uniforms, managed to look resigned as Sebras continued to play.

As Sebras ended a beautiful (cough) version of taps, Team Green cheered, voices raucous with tiredness. A three-day battle had worn them out. Now the only thing they felt was joy that it was over. Before they turned to leave and go home, however, Sebras called, "Wait!"

As everybody turned to [glare at] him, he grinned unabashedly and said, "Thanks, everybody, for getting me this position. But I don't deserve it."

"You've worked forever to get this position! You beat Trumpet Freaking Travis to the ground! What do you mean you don't deserve it?" Laiva demanded, rolling her eyes.

"No, I don't deserve the position. From now on, Rand will be the first chair trumpet! It is he who truly deserves it!" Sebras shouted, a joyous note in his voice.

Everybody cheered once and went home, glad to be free of the Great Band War.

****

7:19 p. m., Saturday

Team Green Members Hanging Out

Anthony's House of Pizza

"Hey, look at this," Autumn said, interrupting a straw war between Verran and Sebras. "There's an article about our school in the paper!" She brandished _The Trinity Tribune_, which had a picture of the Red Hallway, flooded, on the front. "And they put Rand's picture on the front page!"

"Lemme see that!" Rand said, reaching for the newspaper. 

Gabi, however, managed to snatch it first. She scanned the article, grinning, and turned to the rest of them. "Hey, guys, we're famous!" When everybody scrambled for the newspaper, she held it out of reach and read, "'Friday—Officials for Trinity High School returned after the one-week evacuation of our town's high school to find that a mysterious band of youth had evidently been holding some kind of war there. Police officers were called in to investigate when officials discovered debris and clutter from the school grouped into some kind of occult ritual in one of the downstairs hallways. The picture located above was left behind by the vandals, and appears to be one of the school's main hallways flooded with water pumped in by a fire hose belonging to the Occupations of America club. Anonymous reports sent in say that three of the vandals apparently rode a kayak belonging to one of the teachers at Trinity High School down the flooded hallway.

"In addition to several broken windows and chemicals used, the school's supply of pizza has been depleted. Mysteriously enough, not a trace of evidence was found on the scene as to who these vandals could be. Security cameras left on for this purpose were found wiped of the events occurring between Monday and Wednesday, and not a fingerprint was found. If you have any information as to the identity of these vandals, please contact…'"

There was a moment of shocked silence. "We're famous!" Elyse suddenly crowed. "We _finally_ made the newspaper! GO MARCHING BAND!"

"How on earth did we make the paper?" one of Ame's twins demanded. The paper was passed around, and they could see several shots of their damage. Verran, who'd made more money in the summer than the rest of them combined, treated them all to a round of Ski* (which is super-lethal in the hands of band students). They laughed, remembering the stunts they had pulled. Definite favorites were the times the colorguard had gotten lost (much to the dismay of Elyse), the Great Colorguard Pileup, Flooding the Red Hallway, discovering that the Governor had come to inspect the school and had been turned into a baked potato (this came much later), Paper Bunny Bombs, and seeing the crud beaten out of Travis. Kelly, Jen, Trisha, and Lisa all took great pleasure in signing the Artoo Cooler and giving it to Rachel (who had been stuffed into it) as a gift.

"Figures it'd take a war to get us into the newspaper," Sebras remarked after much ski had been ingested and much silliness had commenced. "What's next? A prequel? The Great Jock War of '86?"

As one, everybody looked around and moaned, "NOOOOOOO!!!!"

****

7:34 a. m., Two Weeks Later

Miscellaneous Band People Skipping Band

The Band Hallway

"What exactly is Brorbism anyway?" Sebras yawned, leaning back in his chair.

"Brorbism is simple. The main idea is that King Brorby is ideally the ruler of the world and has the Chinese mandate of heaven." It was probably pure luck that Brorby, being on the other end of the computer-link, could not see their faces. He continued on, "Another aspect is that the world revolves around King Brorby, or me, and that if other people recognize that then King Brorby, as ruler and of the world, can better provide for the people." He paused, probably because Laiva couldn't control her snickers anymore, and continued in a threatening voice, "But if they don't, then the world will be thrown into chaos until my followers rise above the dissenters of the world."

"Oh. Simple," Gabi remarked sarcastically. "So now that we've won this thing, you're expecting us to bow down at your feet?"

"Yes, and I want my throne to be completely of platinum. Golden thrones are just for petty country-rulers." Brorby broke off as his sentences were drowned in laughter from those in Adobe's classroom.

And the moral of this story is: Don't start stories as a joke. You'll end up having to finish them…GEEZ!

But Brorby could not let one that he wanted to take power, no, he thought, this must be done discreetly, slowly creeping up on them until they couldn't resist his mandate to rule, so he just went on, slowly gaining power and momentum.

And the world hid.

* Ski – A citrus flavored soda with twice the intensity of mountain dew, and three times the capacity to cause damage. In other words, the best stuff on earth.


End file.
